


Into the Ocean

by BaneKicksDavid



Series: The Song of River Lea [2]
Category: Hey! Say! JUMP
Genre: "DON'T YOU DARE LEAVE ME IN THIS TOWER", "HOW DARE YOU", "It is done.", #BestFriendHikaru2k20, #madAF, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Enemies to Friends, Hikaru is not a happy camper, Inoo and Yuto mess everything up, M/M, Magic, Minor Character Death, Yabu's backstory, Yamada and Yuto rivalry, Yamada as a mage, Yuto as a mage, Yuto is that naive deer from Bambi, Yuto teasing Yamada, he doesn't hate everyone it seems, hinted Yamachii if you read between the lines, let's look into the past for a bit, magic fights, magical strangulation, some more YabuHika backstory, tagging most important members of jump to the plot, the golden trio definitely forgot something..., they're far from over, things aren't over, yabu as a mage, yamada really does like people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:02:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 34,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25212862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BaneKicksDavid/pseuds/BaneKicksDavid
Summary: One of the colors whispered to him, filling his ears with promises he knew to be true. Great power awaited him. All he had to do was reach out and touch it. He watched as the colors separated, clearing an open path for him to reach out for the magic if he so chose to. He extended his hand-
Relationships: Chinen Yuri/Yamada Ryosuke, Okamoto Keito/Yaotome Hikaru
Series: The Song of River Lea [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1826647
Comments: 3
Kudos: 13





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Finally!! After around four or five months of writing, this child of mine has been written. I originally intended to write this fic around 2018, but I was convinced otherwise into writing stories I'm no longer proud of. This one? This fic I am massively proud of. I've been affectionately calling it "Inoo and Yuto fuck shit up" since I first conceived the idea right after finishing River Lea. 
> 
> I'm honestly so excited for people to read this monster that I've created. I really hope that it lives up to the original because, even three years later, River Lea is still my favorite story that I've ever written. Hopefully, people will love this as well. For now, enjoy the prologue!

It was too dark. The only light that illuminated the cavernous room was the candlelight that danced in the careful wind that flowed in from the open skies. It was a cool breeze, fresh and light, that calmed his trembling limbs as he could hear voices approaching from deeper in the cave.

“The talks have been going well with the neighboring kingdom,” a gruff male voice said, his tone dark. “We have no choice.”

“But what if they turn south? We could use him,” another said, his tone far more jolly.

“I don’t see why we must do this,” he heard his mother say. “He’s but a boy. Surely he can learn to control it.”

“That magic is growing far too quickly,” the first man huffed. “And our enemies know of his existence. Let the power grow, and we will be seen as trying to reclaim what we have lost.” He heard the sigh in the man’s voice. “We have no choice, even if we are killed for it.”

The wind kicked up once more, pulling dust into the air. The crystallizations fluttered into the wind bringing about beautiful colors that made his eyes shine. Yellows and blues, greens and oranges. The colors mesmerized him as they danced for his viewing pleasure.

“If we do as you’re insisting then what will become of him?” his mother’s words caught his ear, her voice sounding closer as footsteps started to draw closer. “His future could be lost. He could be the royal court mage, but you are limiting his potential to a cook or a blacksmith by removing the thing that makes him special. You are ripping his future from his very hands. My son can be someone, but those fools in-”

“Calm down, pretty lady,” the second man said. “Don’t want the walls to hear your threats. We are trying to enter a time of peace, after all. Threats only bring trouble.”

“I wish my husband was still around,” his mother said through gritted teeth. “He’d show you how good he is with his steel and change your mind. You want to get my child killed!”

One of the colors whispered to him, filling his ears with promises he knew to be true. Great power awaited him. All he had to do was reach out and touch it. He watched as the colors separated, clearing an open path for him to reach out for the magic if he so chose to. He extended his hand-

A fat, meaty hand wrapped itself around his wrist, jerking his attention to the gruff man who had dragged him to the cave earlier. The coldness of the grip shocked his body, and he tried to free himself of its tight grip.

“What do you think you’re doing?” the man growled.

“It called my name,” he stuttered. He hadn’t expected them back so quickly or perhaps time had passed quicker as the colors had entranced him. He wasn’t sure. He just wanted to be free.

“Let go of him,” his mother cried out, but the gruff man’s companion held her back. “Leave my son be you filthy mage!”

“Dirty? Is that how you see us?” the thin man holding her said. “We only have the kingdom’s best interest at heart.” He smirked. “Although I may not agree with my partner’s wishes, I can’t say no to him.”

“A dark power grows within your son,” the gruff one said, putting those cool fingers on the young boy’s temples. “I will do my duty to see that it must be stopped.”

A hot searing pain was all he felt seeping across his brow as if it was burning the flesh beneath his skin. He wanted to cry out, to scream, to call for his mother, but his mouth wouldn’t form the words. The magic seeped through his body, burning every inch it came in contact with until nothing else remained. The dust scattered. His color disappeared into the wind, and he felt the power fueling his limbs fall apart.


	2. Chapter One

He jolted awake, a cold sweat forming on his skin as he tried to calm his racing heart beating in his chest. Eyes flitting around the room, he couldn’t focus on the small details around him. The bed, the walls, and his things thrown about the floor. Nothing made sense to him. His fingers grasped the covers, bringing it closer to his person as he tried to remember everything that he could.

Hands. A smooth voice. Was there a little pain? He wasn’t sure. All he was certain of was the cold grip around his wrist that had been pulled from the dream into the material world. He rubbed it, trying to bring a little warmth back into it.

Hikaru didn’t know when it had all begun. A few days ago? A month? It wasn’t every night, but the visions overtook him when he least expected them. He kept trying to hear the voices more clearly, remember their words, but everything he tattooed across his brain was erased whenever he opened his eyes to the world around him.

It didn’t make any sense, why it was happening now. If the dreams were from the past, were they trying to warn him of something? Was it because of the direction they traveled? The closer they drew to the ocean, the more frequent they became, and the icy grip became more of a reality.

A warm hand rubbed circles into his naked back, reminding him he wasn’t alone.

“Hikaru, what’s wrong?” Keito asked, his voice filled with yawns wishing to escape.

“It’s nothing,” he said, reaching down so his hand could brush against Keito’s cheek. “Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Doesn’t sound like nothing,” Keito said, tapping the straw mattress next to him. “Lay down. Talk.”

“I’m fine,” Hikaru said as he lay back down on the bed.

“I could have you arrested for disobeying direct orders, you know.” Keito snuggled closer to him.

“Oh,” Hikaru hummed. His hands explored the muscle of Keito’s chest. “What would you have me do?”

Keito whined, and he couldn’t help but think it was cute. “Not now. I want to sleep.”

“Aw, but what’s the point of dating a duke if I can’t get a little loving during the rough times?” Hikaru asked. He wrapped his arms around Keito’s waist and pulled him closer to his body.

“Shut up and go to sleep,” Keito said, his voice grumbling more as he rolled over, moving farther from Hikaru’s face.

Hikaru pouted, but settled into his pillow. Before long, sleep claimed him once more, and he dreamed of an ocean breeze, beautiful colors dancing across the water’s surface.

* * *

Yabu was already awake when they descended from their room the next morning. A few cups of tea were on the table before him as he polished off his breakfast bought from the tavern owner.

When he caught sight of Hikaru, an all knowing smirk pulled across those lips, and Hikaru glared at him as they approached his table, settling into the chairs opposite of Yabu. Even beneath his dyed brown bangs Hikaru could still see the amusement that filled Yabu’s eyes.

“Have fun?” he asked.

“Yabu,” Hikaru warned.

He took a sip from one of his many teacups. “You know I could hear you through the walls.”

Hikaru slumped in his seat, letting out a long whine before he spoke. “I didn’t do this when you got laid!”

“Yes, but this was years ago, and I haven’t had time to find a pretty little thing to warm my bed.” The last of his food was gone, and Yabu pushed his plate away. “You’ve kept me so busy looking for your little friend, and now I’ve been pulled across the country on your crazy side adventures for a year. I’m surprised I’ve still got my left pinky!”

“I didn’t know that treasure in the north wouldn’t be real,” Hikaru said. “And we didn’t get killed like you thought we would!”

“I had fun,” Keito mumbled, snagging one of the full teacups for himself.

“Very true.” He smiled. “Then tell me this,” Yabu said, leaning on the table. “Were you the top this time or the-”

Hikaru made a show of going to grab his knife, raising an eyebrow at his friend for his comments. Regardless of whether he won or lost against Yabu in a little tumble of a fight, more than likely lost and adding another notch to his growing number of losses, words were still powerful. The southern part of their fair country didn’t take kindly to mages nor those that preferred the freer lifestyle Keito and Hikaru engaged in. He didn’t feel like fleeing for his life so early in the morning.

“Guys, let’s not fight,” Keito’s shaky voice came out.

Hikaru’s hand relaxed on the handle of his blade when he saw Keito’s face.

“Aw, remembering last night?” Hikaru cooed, pinching Keito’s reddened cheeks. He leaned in closer so only Keito could hear his next words, “The next time we have a bed I’ll make sure to give it to you just as good.”

Keito’s face only darkened in color as he covered his face as best he could. The only hints that he hadn’t turned to stone, body avoiding attracting any unwanted attention, was the steady rising and falling of his chest as he tried to calm his heart.

He wanted to kiss him. To lean in and claim those hidden lips for his own, but Hikaru bit his tongue and kept the feeling to himself. Embarrassing Keito further would do no good for his relationship nor their future travels together as a trio.

“I’m only joking, and I hope by this point in our friendship that Hikaru knows as well,” Yabu said. He waved his hand over the cup Keito had been drinking out of before offering it to him. “Couldn’t hear a peep out of both of you last night, or I fell asleep too early to hear what you were up to.”

Keito accepted it, drinking the piping hot liquid. The color from his cheeks gradually faded, his body returning to its normal functions.

“That’s right,” Hikaru said, trying to keep his devilish smile behind lock and key. “You need all of the beauty sleep you can get.”

“Yes, I am old. I get it,” Yabu said, reaching for a cup of tea only to frown once he discovered it was empty. “Why is the tea always gone?”

“There will always be more tea,” Hikaru said, tapping the table. “Now, let’s go. Don’t you know how close we are?”

“I’m aware,” Yabu said. “But neither of you have eaten and-”

“Please Yabu,” Keito said. His hands were gripping his knees.

Yabu looked between the two of them and signed, running a hand through freshly dyed locks. “Both of you make me feel twice my age sometimes.”

“But you love us,” Hikaru smirked.

“Yes I do,” Yabu sighed. He stood up and fixed his tunic so it lay straight. “Don’t complain if you get hungry later. I did warn you.”

A warm smile spread across Keito’s lips as he gulped down the last of his own drink, little bits of the liquid seeping into his own clothing, before leaping up to follow Hikaru out of the tavern. Yabu would take care of their tab, funded through Keito’s purse, and they’d saddle up the horses best they could before Yabu returned.

“Sometimes I question why I continue to travel with you, ” Keito said as they worked, his voice quite teasing to Hikaru’s ear. He had gotten fairly good at heaving the saddle over the horse, strapping it over the saddle blanket, but he never quite tightened the billet straps to Hikaru’s liking. “All of this time, and I still can’t tell when you’re playing with each other or getting into an argument. I fear I’m too naive when it comes to the pair of you.”

“You may, but it’s what I love about you,” Hikaru said, going behind Keito when he wasn’t looking to tighten the billet strap of his horse. “I’d never intentionally harm someone I truly cared about. I would give my life to protect the pair of you.”

They were lucky, perhaps too lucky, that Keito’s family didn’t need his assistance in the capital. It allowed him to travel freely all over the country with them. There was always that worry in the back of Hikaru’s head that, one day, Keito would be summoned back to his childhood home to fulfill his royal duties, but he preferred not to engage in such thinking. When the time would come, he would weigh his choices. For now, he looked only at the days ahead.

He felt a little poke in his side that made Hikaru jump. “If you don’t like the way I do something, you should speak up,” Keito said, poking him once more.

“What are you talking about?” Hikaru asked, pulling Keito’s into a firm embrace and brushing his long locks from his eyes. “You’re perfect.”

“Stop. No, I’m not,” Keito said, a little crimson appearing on his cheeks.

“I need something to pick my teeth with,” Yabu said, going to attach his own pack to his horse. “The two of you are too sweet.”

Hikaru swiftly removed one of his shoes before chucking it at the mage, but Yabu stopped it with his magic and threw it outside of the barn in one swoop.

“I’m never going on an adventure with you again,” Hikaru grumbled, hobbling after it.

“You say that, yet you always tag along on the next one,” Yabu laughed.

A stillness hung in the air, one of sweet anticipation for what was to come. He could taste it the farther they traveled, its scent permeating the air. The more it infected his lungs, seeping through his bloodstream, Hikaru knew what it reminded him of: his mother.

The tree coverage began to break, the sweet shade disappearing as a world of blue filled their visions. Never ending, a wide expanse that took his breath away. He pulled on the reins, halting his horse in its place so he could stare out at the form before him. The sun beat down on him from all angles, sweat forming on his brow, but he didn’t care.

He spurred his horse into a gallop, shooting past Yabu and Keito who were picking their way down the hill to the beauty below them. He yelled as he and his horse raced to their goal.

“The ocean!”

“Hikaru, be careful,” Keito called after him.

He could hear the words, their warning loud and clear, but the joy in Keito’s voice was apparent.

It was like something out of a high class painting you would find at a duke’s estate. The cool breeze, soft waves washing up against the shore as they quietly sung their praises to the earth. Sand clinging to his boots and yet Hikaru didn’t mind if they so much as became dirty, his mind already so far away, remembering the stories his mother used to tell him when he was a child.

She would always speak of the ocean as this mystical place, one where nothing was as it seemed. The horrors, the storms, the wild winds that would rush through the night, destroying homes that weren’t precariously placed to defend against such damage. Yet, it was soft, sweet, kind to the children that played by its gentle waves, greeting them time and time again like an old friend. His mother had told years’ worth of stories from her youth until when she willingly gave her heart away, packing up what little she had to move to the capital, and live with the man she loved and had believed loved her in return.

He had stayed away for too long out of fear, past encounters with crazy seers keeping a firm belief he wasn’t meant to travel south, but someone had changed his mind.

They had started their adventure to the south all because of Keito, his desire to see the ocean. It had always been there in the back of their heads, the quiet voice in their conversations when Hikaru and Yabu discussed where their next adventure would take them. Until the words finally caught their ears, Keito speaking with a confident voice, and Hikaru couldn’t help but be mesmerized but his confidence until Yabu’s words snuck in, wondering why Hikaru was so red.

He lept off his horse the first chance he got, not worried whether he would lose his trusted friend. Yabu was always watching, always making sure that Hikaru didn’t get into too much trouble. At the end of the day, there was also magic to keep their animals close if they wandered too far away.

It wasn’t long before Keito joined him at the sea, taking the time to properly tether his animal first. Hikaru watched as Keito slowly inched forward to the water, having removed his shoes and rolled his trousers up to keep from getting wet, and a large smile broke across his face seeing Keito’s grin the minute his skin met the sea. He would never admit it in the vicinity of Yabu’s ears, for fear of getting teased, but seeing Keito happy warmed his heart more than anything in the world.

“Hikaru,” Keito shrieked, his voice like sunshine after many rainy days, “it’s cold!” A fit of laughter filled his voice as Keito kicked at the water, spraying salty droplets every which way. “It’s so much colder than the River Lea.”

It was positively adorable, and Hikaru wished there was a way for him to permanently remember this moment, this second, before the details slowly lost their potency in his memory.

“Come on, Yabu,” Hikaru called out to his friend, motioning for the mage to join them. The elder boy had just finished picking his way down the hill upon his own horse, taking his sweet time. “Keito says the water feels amazing.”

He heard a splash before feeling little droplets of saltwater hit the back of his head, Keito’s, “I did not!” filling the sounds of the empty beach around them.

“I am perfectly fine from up on my horse,” Yabu said, keeping hold of his reins as he surveyed the two of them below. “I’ve dealt with enough saltwater in my life, and I don’t wish to bring anymore into it.”

“Did you live near the ocean when you were young?” Keito asked, retreating from the waves, the edges of his pants darker after playing.

“I did,” Yabu said. “Before I met Hikaru, I lived in a border town near the ocean. I was doing an apprenticeship up north when he fell, quite literally, into my life and nearly had us killed.”

“I keep telling you. If you had moved a foot to the right, nothing would have happened to-”

Keito sighed, loudly, cutting into their bickering. “One day, the two of you will need to tell me the story of how you met.”

“It’s long.” Yabu said, not missing a beat.

“And complicated,” Hikaru chimed in before shivering.

“The cabbages,” they both said, as if their memories had linked at that very moment, sharing every detail of an occasion they both longed to forget. It was a memory that Hikaru only thought of every so often when it crept back into his memory.

Though there was one thing that captivated his attention more than memories he wished would lay forgotten.

“I didn’t know you were from the south,” Hikaru said, whistling for his horse.

He watched as Yabu blinked a few times before tilting his head a little. “I never told you?” Hikaru shook his head in response. “Strange. I could have sworn I brought it up in all of the years that I’ve known you.”

It was a long time before they set off for a tavern to rest in that evening, Keito needing to be coaxed from the water and back onto this steed before they could set off. In all that time, Hikaru kept mostly to himself, his thoughts racing around in his brain, as he tried to remember any details of Yabu’s past he had been told in their years of travel together. As they secured rooms for the evening, there was something within him, something he hadn’t wanted to admit for some time.

He knew nothing of Yabu. Beyond a few years prior to meeting him that fateful day, there were no memories of him discussing what his life was like before his apprenticeship. What he could remember, from their conversations, was a few questions sprinkled here and there, asking for details of the person traveling beside him, and getting a few words in response. Nothing concrete. Nothing telling of his past. Mostly, his questions were left unanswered. Over time, Hikaru’s questions died in his throat, Yabu’s actions far more important than his past. Hikaru merely trusted Yabu to keep his word, and he did. He never faltered in his loyalty to Hikaru.

One day, Hikaru decided, making plans with himself. One day he would talk with Yabu when they were on the road, traveling and discovering all that their fair country had to offer. He would ask Yabu about his life. He’d ask what sort of trouble he got into when he was just a youth. How many siblings he had, his mother and father’s names, when he knew that he had magical abilities. Hikaru wanted to know it all, just as he hoped Yabu wanted to learn about him.

But time was a factor. Though they would go on their adventures, traveling wherever they heard of something interesting to seek, there was always one thing on the back of his mind, something Hikaru knew they couldn’t forget.

“When do we need to be in the capital for the coronation again?” he asked as they finished untacking their horses.

A royal engagement, one that Keito was required to attend since the breaking of his curse so long ago. His uncle’s abdication of the throne had rocked the country, the news spreading like wildfire along with who would take up the mantle upon his descent: his daughter.

Although Keito had ultimately agreed to participate, going to support a cousin who he had grown up with within the castle walls, his acceptance had been met with a little resistance from his family upon his announcement of bringing his companions along.

“About three months or so,” Keito said after a moment of pondering. I’ll check the invitation before bed. Why do you ask?”

“Planning for the future,” he answered, as simply as he could, only providing more details upon Keito’s inquisitive gaze. “I’ve heard rumors from the east of-”

It was as if time slowed, his words becoming elongated as a figure appeared in Hikaru’s vision that had, for so long, been just a dream. A nightmare that he had been reliving for quite some time. Brown hair, obscured eyes, staggering through the crowd, bumping into those he passed. Sometimes a look back but never twice. Long fingers, delicate ones. Everything about him screamed familiarity, the seer he had been so desperate to run from.

He remembered that day, so long ago. The feeling of a cold hand grabbing his arm, of being unable to break free until the words stopped and the reading was complete. It had haunted him for years, something he never wanted to experience again. He had run, fleeing any rumor of this man. Hikaru had wanted to keep as much distance between them as he could, but Keito’s wish of going to the ocean had clouded his memory.

The closer this man, this seer, hobbled, the more Hikaru was certain he was the one from his nightmares. There was no mistaking it. He wanted to yell out, to get Keito and Yabu’s attention. To get them to run, to get away, but his mouth wouldn’t open. He couldn’t get the words out before the seer was upon them, hands reaching out as he latched onto his next victim and a reading springing from his tongue.

“Usurper!” it cried out. “Leave now and you will escape your fate! If you stay in this land, death will rain upon you from a sea of fire and water! Heed this warning for it is-”

His eyes widened, breath coming a little easier. It wasn’t him. The seer wasn’t yelling a reading about Hikaru, but then who was he speaking of?

Hikaru reached into his belt for his brother’s knife to deliver a swift blow to the back of the seer’s head with the hilt of the blade. They crumpled to the floor, brown locks obscuring their face.

Silence, deafening silence, not a word spoken between them until Hikaru put the words they were all thinking into the air.

“What the hell did that seer mean?” Hikaru asked.

At first, nothing, not a movement between until Yabu finally moved, shrugging.

“I have no idea,” he spoke, voice shaken, clutching the spot on his arm the seer had been clinging onto not long before. “I don’t have a clue as to what he meant.”


	3. Chapter Two

Time passed slowly as they waited for the seer to wake, moving him to a secluded alley of the town to wait. Not many people passed by, and those that did merely looked at their small group and quickly fled, wanting no part in any trouble that could occur. Yabu placed a spell on the seer’s hands, his own quite shaky as he cast the spell, so that the other would have difficulty moving once awoken. 

“You’re sure?” Hikaru asked, arms crossed over his chest once Yabu’s magic had set in. “You have no idea what he spoke of?”

Yabu remained quiet, casting a small spell before their eyes. His movements became stronger, less rattled. His breath came more even and his eyes calmer. “I have been trying to remember everything that I could, any indication of truth, but I have nothing,” he said. “What I tell you now is the truth that I know. I grew up in a village by the sea with my mother, sister and brother. I started to show signs of magic when I was seven, and my mother sent me north for my apprenticeship when I was thirteen. Once I finished, I was given a position with the town doctor in his shop to create magical remedies and beauty products. That was where I met you, Hikaru.”

Hikaru didn’t speak, merely let each of Yabu’s words sink into his ears.

“I don’t have the power to usurp a throne from our land,” Yabu continued, the shaking returning to his fingers as he continued. The spell he cast slowly losing its potency as his emotions took over. “I couldn’t even break Keito’s curse, and yet he tells me that I’ll die if I stay? This, I-”

“It’s okay,” Keito said, taking Yabu’s hands into his. “No one is asking you to leave. I haven’t known you as long as Hikaru, but I know what type of person you are. The person in that reading isn’t you.” His words were soft, gentle to the ears. “We’ll see what the seer has to say when he wakes. Perhaps he has answers to your questions. Perhaps his reading was meant for someone else.”

“It’s not.”

“Hikaru.” Keito’s voice was firm, as if demanding Hikaru play along and pretend that everything was alright. “You know this type of magic isn’t a guarantee. We all do. There’s always some sort of error, and perhaps this is a big misunderstanding.”

“It would be if this was any other seer,” Hikaru said, eyes trained on the sleeping seer before them. 

After moving their little problem, getting a good look at his face, there was no doubt in his mind who it was. He had burned those facial features into his memory in case the day came that he would have another encounter with him. 

He squatted down next to the sleeping seer, brushing his bangs from his forehead. “There’s no doubt in my mind. This is Inoo.”

As if summoned from the depths, Inoo’s eyes shot open, his hands shooting out to latch onto the nearest person, but Hikaru managed to stumble back, scrambling to put as much distance as he could between himself and the seer. With a swift movement of his hands, Yabu pinned Inoo to the wall behind him.

“It is true! It is true!” Inoo screeched, trying to fight against the bonds of Yabu’s spell. “The storm is coming. Nothing may stop it once water strikes!” A blood curdling scream was let loose from his lips before he collapsed once more, breath heavy and labored.

“What...what was that about?” Keito asked, head popping out from behind Yabu’s skinny frame. Hikaru wasn’t sure when he moved, cowering behind the mage instead of standing next to him. 

“Not sure.” Hikaru picked himself off the ground, doing his best to brush away as much dirt as he could from his person. “A new reading? An old one perhaps?”

Inoo jolted up once more, the group tensing as the seer peered around him, taking time to look each of them up and down. His eyes lingered on Hikaru a second too long, an all knowing look sparkling within his eyes, before he tested the bonds of Yabu’s spell on him. 

“Magic,” he murmured, trying to raise his hands as high as he could, but it was as if a wall kept him from raising them a few inches above his lap. “Strong magic. Hmmmm,” he hummed, elbows bending as if that could change how high he could raise them. “Yes, this is nice. Very nice.”

He studied the group once more before settling on Yabu, his arms stretched as long as he could get them towards him. “Dear mage, please set me free! I wish to see the sea.”

“Don’t,” Hikaru commanded. “We don’t need any more of his readings disrupting anything.”

“I do not disrupt. Merely tell the truth of those who seek it or have been sought.” He laughed, the sound like nails on rocks to Hikaru’s ears. “I cannot stop it nor can you. Once it’s begun, all must come true.”

“I never thought I would utter these words, but I regret our trip to the ocean already,” Keito muttered under his breath. “Hikaru, why are we even paying him any attention? This seer isn’t worth our time.”

“Trust me. Please?” He looked to Inoo, the man gazing into the sky above him, laughing at something only he could see. “Give me time, and I know I can get something out of him. Some kind of explanation.”

It took a moment, a sigh, before Keito gave in. “I will trust you. I always do.”

In front of Hikaru Yabu stood, his shakes returning once more, and his heart broke for his friend. In all of their time together, their travel, their jokes, their laughter, he had never seen Yabu as scared as he was now. There had always been this calm over his friend. Whether Hikaru was frustrated, scared, joyful, there was always Yabu behind him being a voice of reason. He was a rock in a windy storm that held the two together, giving them hope when Hikaru had believed there was nothing. Now, that rock had withered and become small. 

Hikaru would rebuild it.

He crossed back to Inoo, looming over the seer but far enough that he was outside of his reach. “What do you mean?”

“What do I mean what? I speak what I speak, and my words are the truth.” Inoo raised his hands once more, reaching towards Yabu. “If you do not comprehend, feel free to listen again. I have the words memorized, so please listen for any lies. I guarantee at the root there is only the truth.”

He tried again, another question that perhaps would yield a better result. “Was there anything else in the reading? Was there something you left out?”

“That I forgot? I don’t forget a thing.” His hands were raised higher this time, Yabu’s spelling weakening. “All of the words have been said. There’s nothing left, I dread.”

Brows furrowed. The rhymes only began to infuriate Hikaru the more that the seer spoke. “Why do you speak like that?”

“Like what? In rhymes?” Inoo asked, cocking his head ever so playfully. “Though the readings are fleeting my rhymes will disappear in time.”

“Make them stop or so help me-” A soft hand on his shoulder cut the words in Hikaru’s throat. 

Keito had come forth, no longer a spectator of their conversation but inserting himself into it. “Tell us what you mean. Now.”

It was as if Inoo was seeing Keito for the first time, his eyes going wide with wonder upon seeing Keito stand before him. A large smile spread across. “A royal! A duke! I never thought I would see such a figure.” 

Hikaru went to grab the knife on his belt. Keito’s request be damned. He would nick this son-of-a if he so much as spoke another word without a solid answer.

“But to answer your demand,” Inoo continued, arms almost at chest height with how far he could raise them, “I am not meant to interpret the visions which I speak. I merely set them out into the world to grace the ears of those that are meant to hear them.” The tone in which he spoke became more coherent, less like flies flitting each way through the sky, as Inoo spoke. “Though they are not the words you wish to hear. I can tell. If you do not trust my word, take him to a powerful mage. They will tell you the same thing as I have. Your friend has great power within him that will destroy this land if he does not leave.”

He looked to Keito, his face void of any emotion as if he was trying to process the information that had been dumped upon them not moments before. If what Inoo said was true and they needed a powerful mage, their options were limited with the number of mages they knew.

“Yamada is too far,” Hikaru said. “It would take too long to travel by horse to him.”

Keito nodded, an unspoken understanding where, even if they were closer to Yamada, it would be difficult to find him hiding within the mountains. “The only other mage I know who is strong enough is Yuto, but it would take weeks to get to the capital from here.”

A sound of triumph, Inoo’s hands free from breaking the spell Yabu had cast upon them. He went to leap up, to run, but Yabu flung another spell through the air to keep him firmly held to the ground.

“Keito, do you really think you can get us an audience with the court mage?”

“I do,” Keito answered, nodding along. “I do. When I left the capital, I left on good terms with him. He should help us with whatever I ask of him. The palace guards as well.”

“Then let’s go,” Yabu said, dusting any imaginary dirt from his hands. There was a little pep in his step, a confidence he had been lacking. “No time to waste. Don’t forget to bring the child along with you.” He looked over his shoulder, a dangerous smile upon his face. “If what he says is false, I’m sure we can find some sort of punishment for the trouble he’s caused.”

Hikaru wished he could capture the look of fear in Inoo’s eyes as he dragged him along with their merry little group. 

Travel was slow progress, four people on three horses. Though Inoo claimed to have a horse of his own, Hikaru didn’t trust him not to lead them off into a wild goose chase or make a run for it while their backs were turned. It was apparent through trying to run before that he wanted no part in their adventure north to the capital for whatever reason.

“It’s not like I have any particular place to go,” Inoo sighed, tugging at the cuffs Yabu had spelled around his wrist. “You could have a little trust in me to keep my word.”

“You?” Hikaru laughed. “Never.” 

Though the more they traveled together, Inoo thrown across his lap to keep watch over on their long track, Hikaru couldn’t help but feel as if this scenario had been played over before. There was a familiarity to the way that they were situated that begged to be remembered, almost as if they had experienced the same but under drastically different circumstances. 

Each time Inoo wiggled on his lap, trying to get comfortable, it tugged at Hikaru’s memory. When they stopped to make camp one evening, Inoo asking if he could run alongside their horses instead of being on Hikaru’s lap, he remembered the same words being asked of him. All he could do was stare at Inoo’s back, wondering why he felt this way.

“I wish you would stop looking at him so much,” Keito murmured to him one evening, far outside of Yabu and Inoo’s curious ears.

Hikaru found himself poking Keito’s cheek, his words soft. “Are you jealous?”

Keito swatted Hikaru’s fingers away, putting some distance between the two of them. “Of him? Never. He’s too…”

“Mushroom like?”

His comment earned him a smack to the back of his arm, a loud laugh from Keito’s mouth that drew the inquisitive gaze of Yabu. No matter how he tried to pry, neither would tell the full story of their little interaction together. There wasn’t a kind way to put how Inoo’s chosen haircut reminded them of one of the more popular vegetables of their country. 

The wide length of the River Lea was soon before them, sparkling water glistening in the fading sunlight. In the distance, the capital stood along with the castle. It’s white stone walls standing strong, not weathering due to the might of the river around it. It did not cave nor bow. The river danced around it’s might.

“We should make camp for the night here,” Yabu said, halting his horse. “There’s only a few hours until we reach the capital, and we’re losing daylight quickly.”

“We should keep going,” Keito said, his eyes trained to the top tower of the palace. “If we arrive during the day, Yuto will be sleeping. Many don’t know, but our court mage rarely rises before midday. He prefers crafting his magic at night when he can see his spells take flight into the night sky.”

Yabu looked to Hikaru, a little shrug upon his shoulders. He knew Yabu would go along with whatever he wished, for it had always been that way. 

“Let’s go,” Hikaru said, spurring his horse forward as Inoo lay firmly against his lap.

The hours dragged on, the paths more difficult to find as the light waned in the sky. Yabu cast a few illumination spells to light their way as the last sliver of light disappeared from the sky, keeping away any animals and unwelcome guests from stumbling into their path on accident. No words were exchanged between them, on how they would gain an audience with the most powerful mage in their country. They merely trekked on until those familiar gates stood before him.

It had been so long since he had stood in front of the palace. The stone work looking solid and intimidating from a distance, but the intricacies and craftsmanship so apparent the closer you stood. It had been carved by mages thousands of years ago, its stone fortified against the strongest magic known to their time. The inside of the palace was decorated with all the fineries of royalty. Tapestries, gold work, rugs created from far off lands. No expense was spared to show the wealth of their country and the ability of its people to create beautiful art.

Despite his worries, it was far easier to gain access to the inner walls of the palace than Hikaru had anticipated. A few words from Keito, a presentation of his royal crest, and their little group was led through winding passageways and through what felt like a thousand doors, to the base of Yuto’s tower within the palace walls.

Two guardsmen were stationed at the base of the tower, one weathered, as if he had been tied to his post for many years, and the other more youthful. Upon noticing the latter, Keito called out to him.

“Takaki! It’s nice to see you again!”

The man froze at the sound of his name, straightening to attention. “Your majesty, it’s a pleasure to see you again. Welcome home. Have you come to see the court mage once more?”

“I have,” Keito said, stepping forward, his name as duke more powerful than a mage, a seer, and a cook’s. “Thought I remember telling you that you could speak more casually with me. Your majesty is my uncle. I am myself.”

A warmth returned to the guards face, his posture relaxing, and he began to speak as though he was conversing with a close friend. “It’s been so long that I’ve forgotten.” His smile was warm, far more welcoming from a guardsmen than Hikaru remembered. “I’m glad to see that you’re well. Your father said you wouldn’t return for many months. He said your work as a-”

“Is Yuto awake? We wish to speak with him tonight,” Keito spoke quickly, glancing between Hikaru and Takaki. “We’ve come a long way, and we have urgent business with him.”

Hikaru raised an eyebrow at Keito’s comments but didn’t say a word. Although Keito was acting a little suspicious, not like himself, he didn’t want to press the issue when they had more important matters at hand. 

“He’s always up,” the other guardsmen said, motioning up the long spiral stairs to the top of the tower. Through the gaps, there were already sparkles of spells floating down, loud blue lights flashing through the air from whatever the court mage was creating. “Can never get a nap until Takaki goes up to get the damn noise to stop.” He huffed. “Doesn’t come down for hours, but if it gets the kid to shut up, I don’t care how he does it.”

“Go ahead,” Takaki said, motioning to the staircase. “Yuto will be happy to see that you’ve returned. Just like I am.”

The climb to the top of the tower was long, the steps narrow and cramped. Hikaru kept a firm eye on Inoo as they climbed, not wanting the other to somehow slip away at the last second. It wouldn’t be good to be known within the palace walls as the group that let a seer loose into the castle. 

“How does Yuto get up and down these stairs each day?” Hikaru grumbled, feet getting heavy with each step. He looked up, a few more spirals left until they reached the top. He could heavy Yabu’s labored breath behind him.

“Levitation spell,” Keito said, motioning towards a wooden platform hanging near the ceiling. “He lifts himself or any guests to the top with it. I always announced when I would come to his tower, so he knew when to expect me. This time...this time it will be quite the surprise.”

When they were near the top, Keito stopped, turning and facing the group behind him. “Just so all of you know Yuto...he’s not the type of person that you would expect. He’s quite...how do I put this kindly?”

“A nutjob?” Hikaru offered.

“Then I’m quite excited,” a large smile upon Inoo’s face. “I’ve never met someone like myself.”

“No one is as convoluted as you,” Yabu muttered under his breath, earning a little snicker from Hikaru.

“No, not like that.” Keito shook his head. “Well...I guess you’ll see when you meet him. Hold onto something tight.” He didn’t move until he made sure that each of them, Hikaru, Yabu, and even Inoo, were holding onto the railing of the stairs. 

Blue magic was fluttering through the heavy wooden door at the tower’s landing. It was just as intricately carved as the exterior of the castle, something that spoke to the history of the country and all who had come before them. A long rope protruded from the stone wall next to the door, its purpose a mystery. 

Keito laid but a single hand upon the door, the great wood seemingly shuddering upon his very touch before a dark green light, much like a forest under the light of a summer sun, began to spread from Keito’s fingertips to cover the entire base of it. It radiated light before the door shattered, a mere illusion, and a great wave of magical energy came flooding from the tower room, it’s power whipping around them like a great storm.

Hikaru clung to the railing, not wanting to get washed over the side and fall to certain doom. He glanced up at Keito, making sure he was alright, but Keito was clinging onto the rope by the door for dear life as he took most of the brunt of the magical wind. 

He had been in the presence of Yamada’s magic before, a delicate power that grew in strength from the power of himself he put into his spells. Hikaru had met countless mages in his travels when he was searching for Keito, all different blends and talents, but he had never experienced something quite like this.

When the wave subsided, the power weakening, they finally peered into the tower room, laying their eyes upon that of Nakajima Yuto for the first time.


	4. Chapter Three

It was as if there was a firecracker darting around the room, jumping from one spot to the other and letting off little bits of laughter when a spell was cast successfully. Yuto would quickly run across the room, sending sheets of loose paper flying through the air as he scribbled something into a leather bound journal before zipping around once more, testing spell after spell. 

Blue magic filled the room. The feeling of its power was cool and welcoming yet explosive as the air crackled around them as they slowly stepped further into the room. It was as if Yuto was creating music with his spells, the tone and musicality only something it’s creator would enjoy, but the look of crazed joy upon his face was oddly endearing. He moved to the rhythm of his own drumbeat, never stopping his movement until Keito cleared his throat, getting Yuto’s attention.

“Keito!” He shouted with glee, hands moving to silence his spells, the crackling energy ceasing except for blue fireworks that sparkled around his body. “You’re home! I’ve missed you so much!” He leapt across the room, pulling Keito into a firm hug and spinning him around. It wasn’t until he set Keito down that he noticed that he wasn’t alone, pulling Keito close to him once more. “Which one is the one that broke your heart? I’ll turn him into a frog. Or a chicken! I like chickens better. Such sweet animals that will peck your eyes out if trained properly.” 

“No need to do that,” Keito said, trying to break free from Yuto’s strong grip but failing. “I have a favor to ask of you.”

“Of course!” Yuto exclaimed, jumping up and down with Keito still in his arms. “You know I would do anything for you!” His smile so full of glee as he ruffled Keito’s hair, turning to their small party to speak. “Keito is the best, most amazing person in the country. You know he used to sit up here for hours and watch me cast spells? Best friend ever. I would do anything for him except maybe bring someone back from the dead.” He wrinkled his nose. “Don’t want to exchange my life for someone else’s sadly.”

“He’s insane,” Hikaru muttered, listening to Yuto begin to ramble off all the things he wouldn’t do for Keito, most of them being high level magic that only the most power hungry individuals would attempt. 

“But powerful,” he heard Yabu mutter into his ear. “Remember our options are limited as to who can help us. I’d rather not spend another month looking for a mage to prove Inoo’s vision wrong.”

“Yuto, please focus,” Keito said, trying to get the court mage’s attention. “We encountered a seer,” he motioned to Inoo, “who said that a friend of mine,” he motioned to Yabu, “has a great power within him. Is there any way that you can confirm or deny this for us?”

Yuto’s fireworks seem to brighten, eyes intrigued as he stepped from Keito to examine Yabu more closely. Hikaru stepped away from his friend to allow Yuto any room he needed. He grabbed at Inoo’s shoulder, tugging the seer a few steps back as well and keeping a firm hand on him.

The court mage took his time, leaving no place unexamined by his careful eyes as he slowly walked around Yabu. A few times he let out a heavy breath, stepping a little too loudly on the stone floors and it making Yabu jump. But, in the end, it was nothing but a sound as Yuto continued.

When he was finished, he spoke. “There is no great power within your friend. As far as I can see, he’s a common mage.” Yuto sighed. “And here I was thinking that I would find another color mage today.”

They all knew the stories, knew them well, for their legends had been passed down from generation to generation. Legends had spoken of a world without color, of bleak greys and blacks. A world without the vibrancy that they knew of today. The stories told of a man that had summoned color from another world, painting the setting sun with vibrant reds, oranges, and yellows, the forest hues of green and brown, and the sea swirling shades of blue. The color had merged itself into the earth and all its creatures, bearing magic upon the earth. 

Hikaru remembered how his mother would tell him late at night, as she tucked him into bed, how each person in their kingdom was born with a little color within them. From the cooks to the blacksmiths and even those without a penny to their name, everyone possessed something that made them special.

The stronger the connection, the more the color’s magic flourished and it took the form of their country’s mages. Only the strongest were able to summon their color into their spells, for they were the chosen few, the most powerful of all. The color mages. 

“Lay a hand on him, and you will see. There’s nothing else he can be.”

Yuto froze at those words, looking upon Inoo as he spoke. “Do you doubt me?”

“I do not doubt you nor your power,” Inoo said, his voice calm and face serene as he spoke. “Merely making a suggestion for I did not see you lay a hand upon the mage the entire time. Best make sure every option has been considered.”

“Can’t believe I’m doing this, but you left me no choice,” Yuto said, rolling up his sleeves. He leapt forward, entering Yabu’s general bubble space. “Let’s do this, Mr. Mage Man.”

Yuto’s touch was gentle upon Yabu’s brow, his eyes closed as he searched for some sort of answer within Yabu. Hikaru imagined it was as if Yuto was searching through a maze, wandering through the courses of his friend’s body for an answer that they didn’t know even existed. Hikaru hoped it was a ruse, an undeniable trick upon them all.

He glanced over at Inoo, the seer’s shoulder still captured by his hand. Inoo was calm, his face not a wrinkle on it as he too watched the silent exchange between Yuto and Yabu. He had no reason to doubt the seer’s ability, a previous meeting telling of his accuracy, but Hikaru couldn’t help but hope, just this once, Inoo was wrong. 

Yuto’s eyes snapped open, sprinting across the room to his bookshelves along one wall. He pulled tome after massive tome from them, their leather bindings thudding to the floor as he sought out something he couldn’t quite find.

“I’ve never seen magic like this before in my life,” he shouted with glee, three more books falling to his feet so quickly. “You’ve got something in your body, a block, oh, what was your name again?”

“Yabu,” Yabu offered, before Yuto was speaking once more.

“Yabu, that’s it. I’ve heard so many stories of you.” Yuto found whatever book he was looking for. It was small, the leather dyed a fine blue, and he flipped through the pages as he continued to speak. “You’ve got a powerful block within you right here.” Yuto tapped his temples. “No wonder I didn’t sense anything coming from you at first. It’s such...I’ve never seen magic like this! It’s so new and interesting. Keito, why didn’t you tell me he had such great power?”

Keito’s hands were in fists, his voice struggling to remain calm. “I...We didn’t know.”

“Then...I am destined to perish.” 

Hikaru had never seen his friend so hopeless, his shoulders drooping, eyes cast to the floor. It was as if he had given up all thought of living a long, fruitful life. Of all of the dreams and aspirations he had shared with Hikaru on their long travels during their search for Keito. He dreamed of, one day, opening a little shop in the countryside. Of never having to work for too hard or too long, letting himself choose the pace in which he lived. 

He would never live out his dream.

Inoo appeared so gleeful when Hikaru looked at him, and it made him want to deck the seer across the face for his joy. He tightened his grip on Inoo’s shoulder. How dare he! When he had written into existence Yabu’s death. How dare he be joyful upon his reading becoming correct to those that doubted him.

“Now that you know my words to be true, it is in your friend’s best interest to leave this land,” Inoo said, standing proud and tall. “Perhaps west across the River Lea would be best? He can create a new country just for himself there.”

“Listen here you brat. If you so much as say another word about my friend-”

“Found it!” Yuto exclaimed, jolting back across the room to Yabu. He tapped the page in his book. “I’ve always wanted to try casting this spell, but I need two mages in order to do it. I’ve never had someone of your caliber with me.” He let out a little squeal. “I think, once I remove your block, you might even be more powerful than me! I’m so excited to see what my new best mage friend can do.”

“No,” Inoo shouted, any confidence drained from his voice. Hikaru almost detecting a hint of fear as Inoo’s eyes went wide. “If you remove that block, you’re going to damn us all. Once that power is set into the world, the-”

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Yuto said, snapping his book shut. He snapped his fingers and, try as he might, Hikaru couldn’t move his feet from the floor. None of them could except for Yuto. It was as if he wanted to stop anyone from interfering with his plan. “I’ve always dreamed of having someone that I could create spells with.” His eyes sparkled the closer he got to Yabu. “This will sting a little, but you’ll feel much better once that block is gone.”

Hikaru could only watch as Yabu tried to fight Yuto off, avoiding his hand for as long as he could. He tried to cast a few spells even to slow Yuto’s movements, but Yuto was more powerful, stronger, and he brushed off Yabu’s attempted spells as if they were flies buzzing around his head. 

“Relax,” Yuto said, placing his fingers onto Yabu’s temples. “It’ll only hurt for a second.”

Immediately, there was a cry of pain from Yabu as he began to thrash, to escape from Yuto’s hands. With his free hand, Yuto cast another spell to stop Yabu’s movements, locking his arms by his side, but Yabu’s screams of pain continued on long past his limbs stopped moving. It was agonizing to hear, as if his friend’s limbs were being ripped from his body, organs crushed under the immense pressure that was being exerted upon him.

“Stop it!” Hikaru roared, hoping to reach Yuto’s ears. “You’re killing him!”

“Just a bit more,” Yuto called out, hand beginning to glow blue as the fireworks around his body intensified. He poured more magic into his spell. “This is a difficult spell to break, but I can do it. Give me more time.”

Yabu’s screams only intensified, his limbs seeming to twitch as his arms slowly began to raise towards Yuto’s hand on his temples. Wind picked up around the two of them, a gentle breeze forming into a strong gust as it whipped around the tower. At the epicenter stood Yuto and Yabu, the eye of the storm forming around them.

Hikaru could only stare, threats dead on his lips as he watched dust particles in the air turned into beautiful colors. Visions of oranges and yellows, deep blues and greens, and royal purples fluttered through the air, a mass of color. The stronger the winds became, the more the colors separated, turning from a ball of color into wisps that flowed through the air, carried by the currents of whatever strange magic was flowing around them. 

He watched as Yuto flinched, not noticing how close Yabu’s hands were until they were by his hands, but they didn’t stop. They kept extending into the sky, reaching for something that only Yabu could see. 

Keito was yelling something at Yuto, a command that Hikaru could barely hear, but his words were lost as the winds tightened around Yuto and Yabu. They formed a tight barrier as the colors began to tighten, swirling around the two mages as they came closer and closer until they finally came within Yabu’s grasp just as the wall of wind became impossible to see through. 

As quickly as it had started, it collapsed. The winds stopped with a magical pulse that shot throughout the room, a silence filling the room as the scene before them became crystal clear. Yuto stood over an unmoving Yabu who had collapsed to the floor.

A thousand thoughts rushed through Hikaru’s head. A thousand memories followed and yet he couldn’t express himself. Couldn’t yell out in grief, scream, or cry. All he could do was assume the worst from the scene before him.

They shouldn’t have gone to the ocean. They shouldn’t have traveled so far south when he knew who resided there. If he had fought for them to change course, go a different direction, maybe all of this wouldn’t have happened. Maybe they could have defied fate.

Maybe Yabu would still be moving.

Yuto crouched beside their fallen friend, hands reaching for Yabu’s wrist. A breath, a second, before he spoke. “He still has a pulse.” He waved his hand, releasing the spells he had cast previously. 

Hikaru scrambled over to his friend, crashing to the floor beside him as he pulled Yabu into his lap and cradled him close. “Yabu, hey, Yabu, don’t you dare do anything stupid right now,” he said, trying to hide his panic best he could, but he knew his words were coming out more shaky than he would like. “You’re always telling me I’m the one that gets us into trouble. You can’t steal my role. That’s cheating.”

He felt a hand on his shoulder, glancing up to see Keito there. Keito was biting his lip, eyes watery as he looked down upon them, and Hikaru tried to fight back the tears as he focused back on his friend.

“I know you’re still there,” he said, hugging his friend as tightly as he could. “Yuto says you’re still alive. Come on, Yabu. Wake up for me. Give me a smile? I want to hear all of those stories of your youth. I want to hear them all.

“Yabu...please…”

Yabu’s eyelashes fluttered across his cheeks, and Hikaru’s breath caught in his throat. He went to call his friend’s name but something stopped him as Yabu’s eyes fully opened. 

Chartreuse.

Yabu’s eyes glowed such a brilliant shade of light green that it was the only thing Hikaru could look at, unable to tear them away from his friend. His features were stiff, unmoving, as if they were made of stone instead of flesh and blood. 

“Ya...bu?”

A snap. A little snap, and it felt as if the floor beneath Hikaru was shifting before everything around him shattered. Stones, books, and all of the little trinkets and tools Yuto kept in his room began falling, the stone breaking into chunks and dropping rapidly to the earth with every occupant within it. The air around them roared as stone met metal, clashing against the tower railings as the roof broke and showed the night sky above them.

Falling, fast, so very fast towards the ground. He tried to grab onto Yabu, keep him close, but it felt as if everything he touched was slippery. No matter how he reached for his friend, grasping at fingers and clothing, he couldn’t get a solid grip on him. Downwards he went, Yabu falling just out of reach as he disappeared into the crumbling stone around them, the dust swallowing him whole. 

“YABU!” 

He tried to reach out, but he was captured, tugged backwards, into a blue safety net, a shield of Yuto’s own creation. They floated down, slowly, and Hikaru kept his eyes focused on the horror around him, the stone and rubble pieces that bounced off of Yuto’s shield went careening into the air, lost in the blackness of the night. 

The people of the capital had told stories. Ones that described the palace as unbreakable, unmoving. It was a symbol of their strength as not only a people but a country full of those that would stand to defend it. Stories of war, of those that had attacked their home long ago, were common bedtime stories, but at the center of it all, the castle remained as a beacon of hope for them all. A piece of their history, Yuto’s tower, had stood so strong, so tall and for so long. Only for it to be destroyed in mere seconds. 

It had become a pile of rubble where it had once stood.

Once Yuto cut the spell, their feet on solid ground and his blue barrier no longer protecting them, Hikaru leapt into the rubble of the tower. He threw stones every which way, not caring where they landed. He had to be there. He had to. Yabu was still deep within the rubble, and he had to save him. All these times Yabu had saved him, pulled him from certain doom, and now. Now this was Hikaru’s turn to return the favor. He just had to dig deep enough to get to him. 

“Hikaru, stop,” Keito said, his voice soft over the sound of thudding stones. “You’re only going to hurt yourself.”

He didn’t listen, merely kept digging. If he kept his mind focused on his task then he couldn’t get distracted. He couldn’t falter and think of worse scenarios, ones he didn’t want to even consider. He had faith and that was enough, wasn’t it?

He felt himself fall backwards, a force pulling him into a hug. Someone’s head pressing into his back.

“I’m...I’m sorry,” he heard Yuto whisper, squeezing Hikaru tighter. “I...If I had known...I swear I wouldn’t have done that if I had known the outcome. I just...I wanted a friend. I wanted a mage friend just as powerful as me, and I...I ruined it. I’m so sorry.” He felt Yuto quiver behind him. “I’m so, so sorry.”

Something felt wet on his cheek, and Hikaru reached up to brush it off. Water?

He looked up into the night sky, a sea of stars above him and the moon shining so brightly around them. Another drop, then too, and it was only then he realized that he was crying. Only then did he allow himself to give in.

Yabu was gone.


	5. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always intended this story to be Hikaru's, but, in order to tell the story that I wanted and to cover all of the topics that I wanted to in this fic, I added another point of view character to utilize for a few chapters. Hope you enjoy this chapter and this double post weekend!

A soft light filled the cavern room, the lamp light low and casting shadows onto the tapestry covered walls. Many chests and drawers lined the walls, a thick layer of dust settled upon them. The furs upon the floor were not as fluffy as they had been from years of use, needing replacement.

Yamada drank from his glass, a long sip as he let the burning liquid slip down his throat. He knew what he must look like to an observer. Tired. He felt it. He felt it in his bones. He had spent so much time running, hiding himself away. He couldn’t remember the last time he had cast a spell that wasn’t to package his possessions into a small box, barely bigger than his palm, and to spell an entire mountain to protect himself. Running. Always running from something.

But from what?

It had been many years since the invitation came to his home, glowing in brilliant colors. A royal request, one from the king himself, inviting Yamada to the palace to test his skills amongst other mages for a title: the most powerful in the country. He knew he was up for the task and knew he had the power to prove himself worthy.

The challenges had been easy. Potion brewing, summoning, spell casting, everything even the most simple mage could do, and yet slowly he knew the mages would fall around him, unable to keep up or didn’t have the power the others possessed. One by one until only one would remain, the chosen one. Him.

If only it had been that easy.

Yamada had spotted Nakajima Yuto from their first meeting. It was hard not to when little fireworks of blue magic popped around him, the energy unable to be contained within the mage’s body. He was constantly hopping from mage to mage, talking animatedly with each person before moving onto the next one.

He was too energetic, Yamada had thought, rolling his eyes as Yuto had all but ran across the field to their first test. He would never have the discipline in order to prove himself as a court mage. He would be gone as quickly as he had come.

Their first challenge had been a power and accuracy test, hitting a moving target that had been thrown into the air. Yuto had volunteered to go first, and his actions quickly stunned the small crowd watching. He had hit his target, a large ball launched from a trebuchet, with ease. How he had destroyed something crafted over several days by metal workers as if it was parchment was what made the crowd go quiet as Yuto celebrated.

There was no surprise as the challenges continued that Yuto passed every single one. He was talented, far more talented than Yamada had originally given him credit for, but there was still a boyish charm to the mage that would, eventually, stop him from becoming grand.

Many of the mages went to bed early after each challenge, resting for whatever task would be thrown their way the next morning, but Yamada found himself in the library each evening, studying. He needed a way, anything, to make himself the number one choice. He wouldn’t fail. He couldn’t fail.

At the end, there was a stalemate between Yamada and Yuto. The two of them stood before the magic council, both powerful mages in their own right and each having pleaded their case for why they deserved the position of court mage. Both young, far younger than the last who had held this position, and had stood triumph against mages twice or three times their own age.

There were purists in the council, those that believed the title should remain amongst the Nakajima family, for it had been so for hundreds of years as they produced powerful mages with their bloodline, and those that believed that fresh blood was needed to defend the king and their country.

Eight mages on the council, the ninth chair for the court mage. Four in favor of Yuto. Four in favor of Yamada, and none of them could be swayed to the other side.

The eldest of the group spoke, a spry old man entering his eightieth summer. He offered a solution for their problem.

“Send them into the mountains,” the elderly man said, the room going quiet when he spoke. For it was well known that when a mage from the Suda family spoke, it was best to listen. “Let them battle with their power. The victor shall return the city and become our new court mage. To the loser…well. I think it is obvious what will become of him.”

A murmur went through the council before a vote was cast, all eight in favor of this compromise.

A guardsman and the youngest mage on the council had guided Yuto and Yamada to the mountains, making sure neither of them engaged in any foul play during their journey. Upon their arrival, the mage cast a spell on both, an invisibility spell.

“This spell will dissipate with the morning sun,” he said, waving his hands to finish it as the pink magic around his spell dissipated. “When the morning sun hits your skin, you will become visible to the other once more and your battle will begin. For tonight, rest. The coming days will be long.”

Yamada watched, carefully, as Yuto’s fingers slowly became translucent. Then his fingers and hands and slowly all of the color of his body began to wash away until it felt as if it was only himself and their escorts standing at the base of the mountains.

“Good luck to you both,” the mage said, waving them both away. “May the stronger mage be the victor.”

The first night had been long, Yamada finding a home in one of the mirror caves for the evening. Firelight danced across the mirrored surfaces, brightening the room far more than Yamada would like it, but he couldn’t complain. He wanted enough light in case Yuto decided to attack when he least expected it. Yamada prepared a few spells for such an occasion and waited for an attack until sleep eventually claimed him.

The night passed without incident. No surprise attacks. No trap spells once Yamada left the comfort of his cave. Nothing. It was as if Yuto had honored the conditions of the night’s commanded rest, and the situation puzzled him. Yuto was sitting upon a legacy of hundreds of years. Shouldn’t he want to do anything in his power to make sure that this was achieved? 

A loud voice reverberated off of the mountains, the sound calling out to him. “Yamada?” it asked. “Come and find me! I want to talk.”

Yuto. It could only be Yuto.

The words continued, long enough for Yamada to cast a tracking spell to Yuto’s location. He wasn’t far, maybe thirty minutes, but it was enough to prepare a few spells in case Yamada was walking into a trap.

Yuto had placed himself at the top of a mountain, the trees cleared to a flat plateau at the top.

The first words out of Yuto’s mouth shocked Yamada. “I want a truce.”

His eyes widened, unable to speak. This had to be a joke, some sort of trick to get him to lower his guard, but Yuto continued speaking.

“I don’t want to fight you,” Yuto said, his fireworks going off around him appearing quite sad to Yamada’s eyes. “But, if we go back to the council and tell them it was a draw, maybe we could change their minds? Get them to establish us both as court mages? Wouldn’t that be amazing? We could share the title together! Just like friends!”

“Are you an idiot?” The smile dropped from Yuto’s face, the light slowly dying from his eyes as Yamada continued to speak. “Do you even know what you’re insinuating? Did you learn nothing from our history? There have been multiple court mages in the past. They were called the royal mage army.”

“I know,” Yuto said, his voice cool. “I remember my lessons.”

“Then you know why we have the council,” Yamada continued. “They’re forbidden from casting magic outside of the confines of the castle and are meant to only advise the court mage on magical proceedings and decide who would take the position.”

“I’m aware.”

“And why we can’t have two court mages,” Yamada said, an anger slowly boiling within him. If Yuto knew all of this then why was he offering something so insane as a solution?

“I only thought it was time to change the standard-”

“And kill us all?” Yamada cut in, his voice like venom. He flicked a spell in Yuto’s direction, hitting him in the shoulder and making Yuto lose his balance for a moment. “We break our treaty with the neighboring kingdom if we allow more court mages to preside over the capital. You really are an idi-”

Something hit Yamada square in the chest. What? He wasn’t sure. He hadn’t even seen Yuto move, seen him cast a spell with his hands, but what had hit him could only be a spell and nothing more. He flew through the air, just long enough for Yamada to cast a spell to cushion his landing upon impact with the ground.

“I’ll destroy you,” he heard Yuto say through gritted teeth. “I’ll destroy you and everything you stand for, and, when I’m done, I’ll return to the capital to claim the position of court mage for myself.” Blue magic crackled through the air as Yamada scrambled to his feet. “I’ll prove you wrong. I’ll show everyone that I can be court mage!” he roared.

It had taken everything Yamada had to hold Yuto off, his magical barrage of attacks never ending. It was only through sheer dumb luck, one of Yuto’s attacks taking longer to cast than the others, was he able to cast a quick teleportation spell and escape back to his cave from the previous evening.

The coming days were similar. Yamada spent as much time as he could running, hiding, plotting. Anything to try and find a weakness he could exploit, to gain victory over Yuto in their duel. Whenever he had thought he found it, his efforts ended in a false hope. Nothing would defeat Yuto, and the more ideas Yamada exhausted, the less and less a new one would come to fill its place.

Power.

He needed more power. He had the talent, the spell casting ability, but he lacked the never-ending power that exploded from Yuto’s fingertips. It was as if he was a rushing river, water coursing over rapids and its energy exploding around each surface. Yamada needed that. He needed that sort of power source.

He had an idea, albeit a crazy one, but one needed to be crazy to win.

Yamada sealed himself in a cave, enough protective spells around him to confuse and confound Yuto long enough to see if his plan would even work. He cast candlelight around the mirrored cave before sitting upon the floor and looking into himself.

Somewhere, deep within himself, Yamada knew there was a source to all of his magical energy, and, if he could tap into it, he believed that he would have an unlimited source of power to defeat Yuto with. He relaxed, allowing his muscles to lose their tension as the stress and worry flowed from his body. He felt the earth below him. He felt the drafty air of the cave breathe through his lungs. He felt the magic flow within his veins, and he followed each drop as it led him to a spot between his eyes where his power rested.

It was as if the world opened up around him as his inner eye came in contact with the source of his magic, a red world flooding his vision. It was picturesque. Towering mountains behind him, the River Lea to his right, and the wide expanse of the sea before him filled his vision. There were few times that Yamada’s breath had been stolen, and the vision his mind created was something he wished he could capture for his children and grandchildren to see: a wonderful world of red magic.

The sea bubbled before him, waves rippling from the spot in front of him, and a red heart rose from the water, it slowly floating until it was before him. He reached out to it, but a voice boomed around him, making him pause.

“You may take it if you wish,” the voice spoke, its sound almost deafening to Yamada’s ears. “Take too much, and you will pay the consequences. For every action always has a price.”

He didn’t hesitate. He claimed the heart. The minute his hands touched it, the smooth surface so warm to his touch, the red world melted around him, and he was transported back to the caves. The material world. The heart was gone.

The mountain shook around him, and Yamada scrambled to his feet to release the spells he had cast to protect himself. He had the power now. He could beat Yuto.

He could win.

The night was dark around them, the blackness filling every crevice that it could reach, and yet Yamada could still see Yuto in the valleys, hands glowing light blue and illuminating his face.

“This is your last chance,” Yuto called out. “Give in and you can save yourself from any more harm.”

With a wave of his hands, Yamada called forth his own colored magic, hands glowing red to match Yuto’s own. “Not a chance.”

If only things had gone according to plan. 

His glass empty, Yamada threw it against the wall of his cavern home, shattering upon impact. Stupid. He had been so stupid so many years ago, his pride getting in the way of seeing when he was fighting a battle he was destined to lose. No matter how many years he had spent studying, perfecting his craft, he had been no match for the raw power that Yuto held.

He should have considered his options more when he heard that warning. Every action had a price, and he had learned it to be so. For every magical attack he had made with the source of his magic, it slowly depleted the amount of magic he had within his body until Yuto was knocking away Yamada’s spells as if they were bugs.

Yamada remembered the fear he had felt then, how he truly believed that Yuto would have done everything to destroy him if he had stayed and continued to fight. He had barely gotten away with his own life, faking his own death so that Yuto wouldn’t look for him.

It was why he ran. Why he continued to move from location to location There was always this fear, deep down, that Yuto remembered him and clung to the anger he had displayed at the top of that mountain. How, if he saw Yamada now, those feelings would only flood back to the surface. The only difference now was Yamada no longer had the ability to defend himself.

A chest across the room drew his attention. It looked like any of the others. Old. Worn. But inside held every drop of the magic he had left. Six amulets crafted from the finest enchanter he knew. All were stored with as much power as Yamada could cram into the red gemstones that adorned them.

His body had still produced magic after he had used every drop of it in his fight with Yuto. It refilled itself over time, but the more spells he cast, the slower it took to regain the magic. It was as if it was now broken, unable to be fixed no matter what he tried. He had tried many times to access the source of his magic, trying to see that beautiful red world he had seen with his mind just once so many years ago. He found nothing.

Once those six amulets were gone, the magic depleted, his destiny was sealed. He would no longer be a mage.

He had paid the ultimate price.

The door to his cave home opened, but he didn’t look to see who had come to join him. There were only a few people who had access to his home and he trusted them all to not bring back anyone dangerous.

“You’re moping again.”

“Of course,” Yamada called out. “I’ve been a mage all my life, and now I’m just going to be…normal.”

“Normal isn’t bad,” Chinen said, sliding off his pack and kicking off his shoes so he could pad across the furs that covered most of the floor. “I’ve lived my whole life without a drop of magic in my veins. You know I’m here and will help you adjust once your magic has gone.”

“You act like it’s right around the corner.”

“Isn’t it?” Chinen asked. “Instead of dreading the future, why not embrace it?”

They had, had this conversation many times over the last years Yamada could see each step before himself or Chinen took them. Chinen had tried to make him see the good, how it wouldn’t be the end of his life, but nothing could compare to the feeling magic gave him.

It was like a drug. The feeling of it coursing through his veins, the pride when the spell cast did it’s intended purpose. Nothing in the entire world would come close to that feeling.

“If you do not wish to talk about it, then tell me this,” Chinen said, laying on the furs next to where Yamada sat. “Tell me another one of your stories? From the books I get you for when I can’t keep you entertained?”

He had lost count of the books he read. Chinen brought one or two with him whenever he came to visit and left with the ones that Yamada had finished when he needed to return to his family just outside of the mountains. Sometimes he had history books, some fiction. Others were the strangest things he had ever experienced, the words never flowing linearly no matter how he tried to understand their pattern.

“Fine,” he said, sighing. There was no use arguing with Chinen when he wanted something, and he didn’t have the heart to tell him no. “Which ones have I told you already?”

Chinen sat for a moment, pondering his options. “I’d like to hear something from history. I do love hearing about the battles from the past.”

One came to mind instantly, a story he had been saving for quite some time now. One of magic from far off lands.

“They say it was a stormy night when everything began,” he started, feeling Chinen shift so his head was in Yamada’s lap. “Rain came down from the heavens as the winds swirled around it, welcoming the water as if it was a friend. The earth moved, splitting itself as the fires from the earth’s core rose to meet it. They say it was chaos on earth until a force shook everything, making it-”

A pulse went through the air, shaking the ground, and Yamada clung to Chinen, mind racing through spells for whatever could protect them if the mountain decided to cave in on them.

When the shaking stopped, Chinen spoke, his voice uneven. “What…what was that?”

Yamada cast a spell, using the last bit from the previous amulet he had broken to bring magic back into his body to seek out the source. It was something simple that even a novice could do, and he followed the train of magic back to its source. 

Green. It was the only color that filled his vision, a light color that blinded him. The power coiled around him before it snapped, flicking him in the chest and smashing him back to his cave home and into the wall before falling into the furs below.

“Ryosuke!” Chinen was by his side in a flash, checking to be sure that nothing had been grossly injured. “What was that? Do you feel okay?”

“I’m fine,” Yamada said, trying to push himself up the best that he could. “That...that was...I don’t even know how that happened.”

Untrained magic. As if it had been left alone for a few decades to go unchecked, and the mage wasn’t able to control it. But how? How had this been allowed to happen? How was it being released now? There wasn’t much that made sense. But that much power...it needed somewhere to go, to be stored. Maybe...just maybe.

“Yuri.” His given name being used, Chinen perked up at the sound of it. “I’m going after that magic.”

“No.” Chinen’s voice was firm. “I can’t let you go out and kill yourself when you don’t have enough magic to-”

“I’ll be fine,” he said, capturing Chinen’s hand in his, pulling it close to his heart for the other man to feel. “As long as my heart beats, I will find my way back to you no matter what. I won’t die before seeing you once more.”

Chinen sighed. “I know there’s no trying to convince you of anything when you’re in this type of mood.” He looked Yamada in the eyes as he spoke. “If you don’t come back, I’m finding a mage to raise you from the dead, so I can kill you myself.”

Yamada smiled, squeezing Chinen’s hand a bit tighter. “I wouldn’t expect any less of you.”


	6. Chapter Five

Curtains were thrown open into the grand bedroom, casting bright sunlight into the room. Hikaru recoiled from the bright light, hiding beneath the covers of the large four poster bed he had been occupying until those were ripped away as well.

“It’s been three days,” Keito said, walking to the other set of windows that adorned the wall facing the outside world. “Time to stop moping, Hikaru. The reconstruction of the tower is almost complete, and Yuto thinks we’ll be able to leave soon. We’re just waiting for the king to approve of Yuto leaving the castle.”

He turned his head, eyes still not quite adjusted to the sudden light, but, even with bad sight, he could see Yuto’s tower finishing being rebuilt from its destruction. Yabu’s destruction. Yabu.

He reached for the blankets once more, but Keito was quicker, snatching them so not a thread was covering Hikaru. “I’m not moping,” he huffed, trying to sound like himself, but his voice broke and he knew that Keito would be able to see right through the facade.

Keito sighed, sitting on the bed beside Hikaru and running a hand through Hikaru’s hair. “I can’t imagine what you’re feeling right now. Although I wish I was the only one that occupied your heart, I can see you’ve lost a piece of it.” His hand moved down slightly, brushing away a tear Hikaru wasn’t aware had been forming. “But I can’t allow you to continue to mourn Yabu’s disappearance. It’s breaking my heart too much to see you in so much pain.”

It wasn’t something that one could come to terms with so easily, not in such a quick period of time. There had always been this understanding between him and Yabu, a bond that had been forged through years of trust built together. Although Hikaru’s grand ideas more than often never played out the way that he intended, Yabu had always been there to sweep up the pieces and add a little insight when needed. If not, he was there to make sure neither of them became too maimed or injured. 

A piece of him was gone. A portion that he considered an integral part of who he was. No matter where the three of them traveled or explored next, Keito had become his heart, but Yabu was now his home.

“Let’s get up today?” Keito asked, his tone so hopeful to Hikaru’s ears. “Yuto thinks he’s found a way to find Yabu.”

He dressed slowly, hoping that Keito would give up and allow him another day in bed, but the duke stood by his convictions, not allowing Hikaru the bed time that he so craved. He filled Hikaru in on little daily things that had been happening in the castle since his self-isolation had begun. 

How the palace and king had welcomed their new guests and allowed them to stay in the west wing of the castle. How there had only been one life taking injury from the tower collapsing, the gruff guard they had met before ascending the tower to speak with Yuto. Takaki was fine but a little shaken. His companion had requested a midnight snack and sent Takaki off to the kitchens to fetch it. He had been on his way back when the castle had begun to shake, and it wasn’t until he returned to his that he witnessed the destruction. He had blamed himself for something far outside of his control, thinking that if maybe he had been there as well he could have saved the other man.

“Where have you been staying the last few nights?” he asked, tugging his tunic over his head. Keito had been a constant in his sleeping routine the past year, the two cuddled close as they slept. Without him in bed things had felt so...empty.

“Just next door,” Keito said. “I...I know you needed me, but I didn’t want to be a reminder of...what had happened.”

Hikaru nodded along, the memories of the last few days vague in his memory but something he could still call upon. The first day was a blur, time not existing inside of his brain. The only thing he felt was anger. Anger at Yuto, for his actions. Anger at Yabu disappearing, but, mostly, anger at himself for not having the power to stop it. On the second day anything that reminded him of Yabu had caused a pain to well up in his chest, hurting him more than any physical pain could. Then the third...he had spent not feeling anything, merely laid in bed and waited for time to pass. Perhaps it hadn’t been the healthiest form of healing, but it was what helped him through those long days. 

“It’s okay,” he took one of Keito’s hands in his and gave it a firm squeeze. “Some pain can’t be healed by others.”

They left the room soon after, Keito flagging down one of the maids and asking her to have some food delivered to the library for the two of them.

The royal library was grand, far more grand than Hikaru could have ever imagined. Two floors of shelves, the books covering every inch of wallspace the massive room could hold. The surfaces were wooden and intricately carved, the smell of a forest almost lingering in the room. Lanterns hung from the ceiling, illuminating even the darkest of corners into bright light. There were many tables and chairs in perfect lines in the center of the room, which is where they found Yuto and Inoo. 

“You know, something’s been bothering me for the last few days,” they heard Yuto say as they approached. Several books were flying around the room, opening themselves for Yuto to check a page before sending them flying back to wherever they had come from. “Why are you here? You haven’t done much besides follow me around wherever I’ve gone.” 

“I don’t even know why I’m here!” Inoo shouted, throwing his hands up into the air, but one was caught in the cuff around his wrist. “And follow you around? You’ve been dragging me everywhere you’ve gone and murmuring excitedly over seer magic.” He tugged at the cuff. “At least take this thing off of me.”

“But Keito assigned me to babysitting duty, and I can’t forgo a royal’s official degree,” Yuto said.

“Then that explains why I’ve been following you around!” he stopped his momentary argument with Yuto when he noticed Hikaru and Keito approaching, tone turning far more teasing so quickly. “I see that sleeping beauty has now awoken. Finally come to help the class?”

“I heard there was news about finding my friend,” Hikaru said, sitting across from Inoo at the table and Keito sitting beside him. “I don’t care about anything else right now.”

“Finding him isn’t the issue,” Yuto said, a few more books flying back to their shelves. “That type of spell is easy, especially since we have his belongings. I just needed to reteach myself the spell since it’s been ages since I’ve used it. What I’m trying to figure out is how I can fight him on an even playing field.” A few more books flew to Yuto. One he sent away while the other he kept. He waved his hands and all of the books flying around the library went back to their homes. “That level of magic he has will be difficult for even me to beat on my own. There are some that don’t believe it can be done and think our country will be destroyed because of it.”

Destroyed? But it was just Yabu. He wouldn’t just topple an entire kingdom just because he could. 

“When Yabu destroyed Yuto’s tower, he sent a pulse of magic all throughout the country,” Keito said. “My uncle has been fielding worry and complaints from citizens the last few days. He’s sent out a message to all of the outlying towns that everything is under control, but we’re not sure if it’s done anything to settle the panic everyone has felt.”

“I would like to put upon the record that I did warn all of you that this would happen if you removed the block, but no one listened to me,” Inoo said, resting his elbow upon the table and putting his head into his open hand.

“And this wouldn’t have happened if you had controlled yourself and never told that reading in the first place,” Hikaru said. “Yabu would still be here if you hadn’t.”

“You act as if I have entire control over my power, and the people of our fair land don’t call me a mad seer,” Inoo said, resting his free hand upon his chest as he spoke. The chain to his cuff clinking as he moved it. “I cannot control when the visions come and go. I merely set them free.”

“You should have kept this one caged,” Hikaru said, an anger starting to boil within him each second he looked at Inoo. To his slowly enraging brain Inoo could be the only cause of this. He was the only cause of all of this chaos. 

“You are refusing to listen to reason,” Inoo said, raising an eyebrow at him. “I have had nothing but the best intentions for our country to keep a storm from destroying us all.”

“Hikaru, drop it,” Keito said, voice warm in Hikaru’s ear. “Nothing good is going to come from this if you continue to argue. I know you’re hurt, but we need everyone’s help that we can get at this point.”

“Yes, listen to your beloved,” Inoo continued. “I don’t understand why I am the sole source of your ire.” He motioned to Yuto with his chained hand who was enraptured in the book he had selected to read. “The cause of your anger was two pronged. For I gave the reading and Yuto undid the block. There are two instances that led to our current situation and yet you focus on me.”

“Perhaps it’s because Yuto didn’t come up with some ridiculous lie that turned my best friend into-”

Suddenly, Hikaru was flying, ascending rapidly to the ceiling of the library until all of his limbs and his body were stuck into the intricately painted ceiling, a display of light and dark in a never ending battle with each other.

“Do you promise to be nice?” Yuto asked. His fist was closed, the spell holding steady. Hikaru nodded to his question. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” he said. “Now let me down!”

Yuto unclenched his fist, letting Hikaru drop rapidly to the floor but catching him with his magic before he crashed into it.

“I did warn you,” Keito murmured. “You really don’t get along with mages, do you?”

Hikaru was surprised at the comment. He didn’t think he had bad blood between himself and mages. “I don’t?”

“Not at all,” Keito said. “I’ve seen your fair share of bickering with Yabu and now Inoo. Let’s not forget about all of the issues I’ve heard in relation to Yamada as well.”

“We don’t talk about those...” Hikaru muttered, casting his eyes away from the group as he sat back down in his chair.

“Yamada?” he heard Yuto softly ask.

“So he is alive,” Inoo said, an odd smirk to his voice. “Everyone said he died years ago, but he’s been hiding it seems...”

“Let’s get back to the matter at hand rather than discussing something to get us off track?” Keito suggested. “Yuto, you told me this morning that you had an idea of what to do once we found him?”

“Oh, right!” Yuto said, perking up. He flipped a few pages back into this book to a diagram that took up the entire page. “Whoever cast the original spell upon Yabu must have been incredibly powerful or just lucky they caught him before Yabu’s magic fully matured. It requires so much concentration and control to even achieve a magical block, and one that could hold back that much magical power over the years is-”

The library doors slammed open, one of the palace staff scurrying as fast as his feet would carry him. “Sir,” he said bowing to Yuto, and, upon noticing Keito, he bowed to him as well. “Your highness.” Keito cringed at the royal title. “I have a request from the king. He wishes to speak with you both.”

“Can it wait?” Yuto asked. “I’m in the middle of an important meeting.”

“He requested you immediately, sir,” the staff said. “He said it couldn’t wait.”

“Perhaps he’s finally gotten to your request to leave the castle and wishes to speak with us both about it?” Keito suggested. “Best to go now rather than later if that is the case.”

Hikaru could see the worry in Keito’s eye, so he put on his best smile to try and ease his worry. “I’ll be fine,” he said, trying to keep his tone even and like he hadn’t been flying through the air minutes before. “Go on, so you can return quickly and we can decide our course of action.”

It wasn’t long before both Yuto and Keito followed the staff, him casting a nervous glance over his shoulder before leaving. A silence filled the room until Inoo spoke.

“You are the most confuddled mess of a human that I’ve ever encountered, and I’ve met myself,” Inoo said, the usual teasing tone to his voice gone as he spoke. “You throw out strong words like ‘lie’ and yet both of us know you believe in my readings as much as the next.”

“It’s easier to blame what you can’t see,” Hikaru said. He glanced at the books around them, their leather tomes too far away to read the painted titles upon the sides, before returning to the man in front of him.

“And yet what you can’t see has already proven itself to be a valuable and accurate tool,” Inoo said, his focus never leaving Hikaru and it was as if he was looking into Hikaru’s soul. “You haven’t told them, have you?”

“Told them what?”

“That we’ve met.”

Hikaru froze. He had hoped, by some force of sheer dumb luck, that he would have been forgotten, a mere blip in Inoo’s history, but it appeared as if it wasn’t the case. 

“That’s why you are so quick to defend my accuracy but call it a lie when it conveniences you the most?” Inoo asked, a little smirk curling around his lips. “Because you have already had a first hand experience of my power but do not want them to see how truly you fear me.”

It was like his mind went back to that day, a summer’s day. How the sun had beat down upon the tiny town from above, yet people still went about their daily lives as if they weren’t sweating through their clothing where they stood. How, even from the memories of the heat, the sting of cold hands stood out. How insane words had clouded his ears, and, no matter how he tried, he couldn’t break from the weak grip that clutched onto his forearms. 

“‘A great power will greet you. Treat it like a friend. Never treat it wrong or for sure your life will end. When it reaches out its hand, take it into yours. Disrespect it or you will listen to its roars.’” Inoo sighed once he completed reciting the reading. “I do miss when my power allowed me to rhyme. It was far more fun.”

“I remember your words well.”

“Of course,” Inoo said. He shifted in his chair, a slight frown on his face when he couldn’t move his arm as much as he wanted due to the cuff around it. “Then you remember as well that I am the reason you met your friend and began to travel with him? Because I do. I remember it well.”

He remembered it, too. How could he forget? He had run from Inoo the moment that his vision stopped, trying to put as much distance as he could between the two of them in case another reading would come forth from Inoo’s lips. Hikaru had been so focused on running, from escaping that death grip, that he had run into a mage a little older than himself out on an errand for the shop he worked for. The two of them had gone careening into a cabbage cart, and their ensuing argument, mostly over several liquids spilled upon Yabu’s person. Those precious vials had been purchased with Yabu’s bosses money for their shop, and he demanded payment for what he had lost, something that Hikaru couldn’t afford to pay.

The ensuing argument escalated, drawing the eyes of those around as Yabu started flicking a few spells at Hikaru to try and encourage him into a fight or pay for the lost products. Everything had been under some semblance of control, despite the cart owner groaning about his cabbages every few seconds, until a stray spell hit a passing town soldier in the leg. The man was quickly angered, demanding to know who had “viciously” attacked him. He wouldn’t listen to reason and loudly shouted for his fellow soldiers as reinforcements. 

Hikaru had sworn he had never banded together with someone he so quickly disliked as when he saw the number of guards increase, surrounding them both. 

In their escape, they had oddly worked well together except for one instance. He had tried to get Yabu to move just a foot to the right, but, given their situation and their less than ideal meeting, Yabu refused to listen to him. It was how Hikaru ended up with a pair of knitting needles stuck in his-

“Why push us together when you were only going to tear us apart in the end?” Hikaru asked, trying to repress his memories from the situation in his past. 

“I never intended to push the two of you apart,” Inoo said. “For the two of you needed to be together in order to break the duke’s curse. I had only thought, only wished, that I could somehow prevent the future from happening if you, your friend, and the duke left our country. I’m afraid to say it seems I failed.”

To break the curse? To stop the future from happening? How much did Inoo know? How much was he withholding? To Hikaru’s ears, it sounded as if he knew every way the stars would align, how the shift in the earth would affect the balance of those around them. There wasn’t any way that he could have that much power, right?

He decided to try and play into the confused vibe Inoo was emitting. “You don’t make any sense.”

“What do you expect, darling? You’re talking to the mad seer,” Inoo said, he scooted his chair ever so slightly back so he could kick his legs onto the table before them. “Am I speaking the truth or the opposite? One will never know. Perhaps I don’t even know myself. Best to take everything I say with a grain of salt.”

A sharp knock on the door came once more, the knocker not entering until Hikaru stood to welcome them in. The maid Keito had flagged had finally returned with their food, decorating the table with two place settings before placing his and Keito’s food with it.

“I do have one question that perhaps I will never get the answer to unless I speak now,” Inoo said, resuming their conversation once the maid was gone. “Why did you come searching for me a year ago? I’ve always been curious.” Inoo raised a hand as Hikaru went to speak. “And before you ask, yes, I did know. I have flies in many places that pass along their words to me.”

There was no use hiding anything. Despite his ways, Inoo knew more than what he let on. “It was to check in on Keito.”

Inoo blinked, stunned. “Really?”

Hikaru nodded. “Yeah. I was...I was worried about him. I wanted to make sure that he was adjusting well to his new life in the castle, so I could put my mind at ease.” He bit his lip to keep any unnecessary feelings from bubbling up. “I’ve only wished for his happiness.”

Inoo leaned back in his chair, taking one foot off the table as his brain seemed to decipher a puzzle too difficult to master. “You...you are a far purer human being than I originally anticipated. Perhaps hope is not as lost as I originally believed.”

Before he could prod, ask Inoo what he meant, the doors to the library were thrown open once more. Only this time a palace staff nor a maid were the ones to enter. Yuto had returned, chest puffed out triumphantly and fireworks of magic exploded around him rapidly as Keito struggled to keep up behind him. 

“So, I have good news, and I have great news,” Yuto said, a large smile on his face. “Which would you like first?”


	7. Chapter Six

“This isn’t exactly what I pictured when you said there was great news,” Hikaru huffed, adjusting himself on the seat of his horse. The great walls of the capitol stood behind them, growing smaller and smaller and they rode south.

“I’m so excited,” Yuto squealed. “My first big adventure with my new best buddies. We’re going to have so much fun. We’re going to go camping and look at the stars in the night sky. Oh! Can we tell ghost stories? I love ghost stories. I’ve read so many of them. I’ll scare your breeches off, I promise!”

“We need more powerful mage friends,” Hikaru muttered under his breath as Yuto continued to list all of the things he was excited for.

“At least Yuto is harmless?” Keito offered, riding fairly close to Hikaru. “He’s just easily excitable when he isn’t in work mode.”

When Yuto and Keito had returned from their meeting with the king, he had proudly proclaimed the king had granted him special permission to sort out the magical disturbance that had been felt a few days prior. For if their little problem was taken care of, the people of the country would rest easier in their beds. 

That was the good news. The great news? They were leaving immediately.

“Shouldn’t we sit down and discuss our plan before we go?” Keito had asked, clinging to Hikaru as Yuto rapidly ascended them up to his tower on the small platform. 

“It’ll be fine,” Yuto said once they reached the top, waving a hand and the door to the tower room swung open. Hikaru, Keito, and Inoo stepped off of the floating platform and into the room behind him. “I’ve got this all under control. There’s absolutely no need to worry at all, Keito, my friend. I just need to finish a few little details, and everything will be great!”

It was a strange sight to be seen. Objects floated around the room, placing themselves back in their original homes while a few brooms swept the floor, getting rid of any dust and debris from the floors. It was as if the whole room was working to put itself back together from how it once had been three days prior. 

“This is insane,” Hikaru whispered, unable to focus on one thing for too long, not wanting to miss anything. “Have you been doing this the entire time with your magic?”

Yuto snorted. “Of course. Whose magic do you think rebuilt this entire tower?”

Hikaru stopped and truly looked at the mage, flitting between a few books and things before slowly packing a travel bag for the imminent adventure. Although a bit crazy, one of the more childish people Hikaru had encountered in his life, the realization of how powerful Yuto was came crashing down upon him. 

There was a pure fact that court mages were the most powerful in the land. Even a simple mage held power that Hikaru could only dream of possessing. From Yabu’s simple protection spells to the grander ones Yamada had cast for him, he had seen such vastly different casting abilities. But Yuto? The Yuto that stood before him had been rebuilding an entire tower while going about his normal day as if it was nothing. It was-

“Incredible!” Inoo shouted. “Absolutely incredible. So, first, I’m taken from my home with little to no reason at all, watched over like a prisoner for three days, and now you mean to lock me in a tower until you return?”

“The maids will bring your food every day?” Yuto offered as if it was some way to rest the seer’s anger. 

“That isn’t a solution,” Inoo said. “You’re going south. Why not leave me someplace along the way so I can return home?”

Yuto went to a chest of drawers and opened them, packing a few clothing articles as well. “Do you promise to let me find you once I’m done to discuss your seer magic?” When Inoo didn’t respond, he snapped his fingers and the seer was unable to move his feet. “That spell should wear off about an hour after we’re gone. If you had been willing to meet once my work was done, this would have ended far more differently.”

“You can find another seer and ask them about it,” Inoo offered.

“But I want to talk to you,” Yuto said as a grin spread across his face. He pulled the strap of his bag over his head so it hung off his shoulder and across his chest. “You’re the most powerful and only seer that I remember encountering, and we both know how rare it is to find a strong seer or enchanter. You don’t see a seer walk into the castle just every day, you know.” Yuto let out a chuckle at his joke. “So I’ve decided that you’re the only one I want to discuss these things with.” 

Yuto started walking for the door, and, after exchanging a glance, Hikaru and Keito followed after him without a second thought. “The maids will be up in a few hours to bring you food, my dear Inoo, and I have plenty of books to read. Enjoy your time in my home!”

They could hear Inoo’s shouts long after they had descended Yuto’s tower. 

Hikaru had imagined traveling with Yuto to be a disaster, the court mage somehow finding moments to breathe with how much talking he did to fill the air around them. A few times Keito would jump in as Yuto was telling a story from his time in the castle, the two reminiscing about something they had a shared experience over. Their laughter filled the quiet air around them. Yet, as time passed, he found that he didn’t mind the chatter as much. It kept his mind from wandering in directions Hikaru wasn’t sure he wanted to explore within himself.

Setting up camp within the woods also took less time than before. With a snap of his wrists, Yuto assembled a pit for their fire, drew water if Hikaru wished to make a stew that evening, and had even created little shelters for them to sleep within. The king had even allowed an allowance to fuel their adventures, allowing them no worries upon where they would sleep when a town or village came into view. 

“If I didn’t know any better, I would think you’re trying to bribe our friendship,” Hikaru said as they left one of the nicer taverns in the city they had come across.

Yuto shrugged. “Might as well sleep some place nice when we don’t know what is waiting for us. Especially if we’re not the ones paying for it.”

The trees began thinning the more they traveled south, Yuto’s tracking spell leading them southeast across the country. A few times he would approach Hikaru, asking to see something of Yabu’s to check the spell’s accuracy, and Hikaru procured one of Yabu’s tunics he had brought along for that very reason. 

Most of Yabu’s things they had left at the palace, knowing they needed to return soon for the coronation and could get them then. Hikaru had made a small pack before they had left of a few necessities he knew Yabu would appreciate: a few of his favorite clothing items, the book he had been enjoying, and a few pouches of tea. The rest could wait until Yabu rejoined them.

Soon the sea was before them, gleaming brightly until the morning sun. He remembered how he had seen the ocean for the first time, stunned by it’s beauty in what felt like so long ago, but now it only served to remind him of a happier time, one Hikaru longed to return to. 

The tracking spell led them east, the ocean crashing against the sand to their right. The sound was rhythmic, creating a beat that matched the pace of the horses hooves. Keito and Yuto talked quietly, their voices blending into the beating sounds around them, but all Hikaru could focus on was the tracking spell. The more they traveled, the closer to Yabu they became, the brighter it shined. Soon. They would find him soon.

The day slowly passed, the sun falling in the sky, as another village came into view. Suddenly, Yuto cut the spell and motioned in front of them. “Looks like we have company.”

It was as if the entire village had come to greet them, a crowd of people had gathered at the edge of the town. They didn’t do anything, merely stood and stared at their small group slowly approaching them.

“I don’t like this,” Hikaru said, clutching tighter to his reins. “I feel like we’re going to get killed.”

“If they try anything, I’m sure Yuto will defend us,” Keito said, trying to reassure him.

“I’ve never had a welcome party before,” Yuto said, his voice so joyful. “Then again, I haven’t left the capital since I became court mage. This is exciting.” He shot off ahead of the two, nudging his horse into a canter. 

“You sure about that?” Hikaru asked.

The only response he received was a low ‘shut up’ from Keito before he urged his horse to follow after Yuto.

They slowed as they approached, the crowd a wall of people as they came closer. Once they were before them, a woman stepped forward, her hair a steely brown and high cheekbones somewhat familiar to Hikaru. He just couldn’t place where. 

“We don’t get many visitors,” the woman said, addressing them. “No one ventures this close to the border.”

Keito was the first to speak, addressing the woman and the crowd watching them. “I am Duke Okamoto Keito. I have brought with me our country’s court mage, Nakajima Yuto, and my...friend, Hikaru.”

There was a whisper that went through the crowd, and Hikaru clutched more tightly to his reigns. Even if Yuto found some odd joy in being greeted by a crowd, something didn’t sit well with Hikaru with how the crowd was reacting. He hoped they meant well.

“You’re a group of high ranking palace folk,” she said, looking them over. “I take it you’ve come for him?”

Hikaru looked at his companions, not sure if he should be the one to address her, but Keito answered. “Who do you think that we’ve come for?”

The woman snorted. “Who else? My son returns for the first time in almost a decade, and there are winds of trouble shifting in the world. It wasn’t a question of if but when someone would come to claim him.” There was something in her eyes, something Hikaru couldn’t quite make out. It was a familiar emotion she hid quite well. “What do you mean to do with my son?”

Keito answered without any hesitation. “We want to help him. He’s our friend.”

The woman watched for a moment, lips tight, before she nodded. She started walking along the front of the crowd, motioning for the three to follow her. “Come along then. I’m sure the lot of you are hungry. I’ll feed you before bringing you to where Kota is.”

The three exchanged another glance before Hikaru nudged his horse into following the woman, speaking with her as they walked. “You’re Yabu’s mother?”

“I trust you mean my Kota, for I have two boys. The other lives in another village along the coast now,” she answered. “Call me Kyoko. I’m certain that you have many questions for me as to why my boy is this way, and I will do my best to answer all of them.”

They came to a humble house in the heart of the village, Yabu’s mother offering them a small meal that had been cooking at the hearth. They ate in silence, Hikaru not sure when or if he should speak first. He had so many questions about Yabu’s past and his life, but were any appropriate given their situation? Was this the time to reminisce about the past?

Kyoko looked so calm as she ate. As if it was a common occurance to have a few strangers at her table for food, or perhaps she found comfort in this? He remembered how Yabu said he had grown up with two siblings. Perhaps the sight of her table full, three men at it, brought memories back to her of easier times. 

The meal finished, the table cleared, it was only then Kyoko spoke.

“I think perhaps this is my fault,” she said. “For this story goes back many years, before my children had even been born.”

Long ago, when Kyoko was but a child entering her sixteenth summer, the world was a far different place. Their fair country and the lands to the east were tied together by bonds of disagreement. War had broken out between the two for many years, and the small towns near the border were a battle ground, mages capturing them only to lose their footing once the other side reclaimed them. 

Many families had left, moving inwards to avoid the fighting the best they could, but her family remained. For their town had been founded by Kyoko’s grandfather’s father, and her father had the responsibility to protect his people. 

The fighting had cooled for weeks, neither side striking, and there had been belief that the war would be transitioning to a time of peace. An envoy from the neighboring country was sent to their little town bringing offerings of peace for neither side wished to continue fighting despite what their nations commanded. An agreement was met between the two villages and soon, the entire country followed an official ceasefire.

As an act of goodwill between the two small towns, the leaders of both sides intended for their children to wed, so that it would show the bond between the two. Kyoko married the son of a mage, a powerful mage in his own right, and moved across the border to begin a family with him.

Times were shaky, threats of violence coming every few years. It felt as if when each of her children was born, there was something that nearly threw them back into conflict only for it to be fixed before the two sides could clash once more. Kyoko continued to raise her family through it all, working hard to establish herself in a country she knew little about.

Her first two children were barren to magic, not a spell coming from them even as they continued to grow older. She could feel the disappointment from her husband, for he wished more than anything to have a child to practice with and teach. The third, her little Kota, was what broke the dry spell. It wasn’t long before his showed signs of magic, a little gust of wind that curled through their home when Kota smiled had Kyoko’s husband grinning from ear to ear. 

Elemental magic.

Five elements. Magic tied to the bloodline and spotted within the first few years of life. The earlier it was spotted, it was foretold the power of the mage would increase by tenfold as they grew older. Her husband had only shown his power when he was two years old, and yet his son showed his hours after being welcomed to the earth.

“Perhaps one day he will be powerful enough to protect our future king,” Kyoko’s husband had said, cradling Kota in his arms. “What a great future you may have.”

The year Kota turned three their humble peace collapsed around them once more. Kyoko had stayed at home to watch the children as her husband left to protect their house and their town. Two years of silence. No words, no letters. She lived a life in a land still foreign to her despite her many years away from her country of birth, waiting for her husband’s return. No sign that he was even alive until a hard knock came upon her door, two uniformed men telling her that they had news for her and asking if they could come inside. 

Kyoko held herself together until they left, collapsing to the floor. She allowed herself time to cry. For although her husband was not someone that she had loved at first sight, she had come to adore and love him from their time together. He was the father to her children, her rock in a country she was still learning, and he was now gone. 

A warm hug encircled her, calming her with its energy. She didn’t think anything of the strange power that washed over her until Kota ran into her arms.

“Mommy, did it help?” he asked, hugging her tight.

“Did what help, my sweet?” she asked, cradling her youngest close to her. 

“My magic.” 

She froze, releasing their tight bond so she may look her child in the eye. “What do you mean, Kota? What magic?”

Her little boy shrugged, explaining he had no idea. He had merely thought that he wanted to see her happy, and, slowly, he had watched his mother’s tears dry. 

She had experienced something similar to this when she was a young girl. A simple spell her father had cast to help her upon mourning her cat that had passed from old age. It was magic from her homeland. Two different types of magic flowed through her son’s body, something that she had believed to be impossible.

“Kota,” Kyoko said, her little boy looking at her with all the love and adoration in the world. “Never do this magic outside of our home. It must be our little secret.”

And so they had kept it. Not a soul knew of the second strain of magic Kota held, not even her eldest children. Once it was safe to cross the border to her country of birth, Kyoko would return to her childhood home. She would ask her father to teach Kota about his magic, at least until he was old enough to get a magic apprenticeship. Perhaps her son could learn how to harness both sides of his magic and for both to exist in harmony. 

They hadn’t been careful enough, for there were always neighbors sticking their noses where they shouldn’t belong. Someone saw her country’s magic come from Kota, a boy the village knew was well versed in wind magic. Word of her son’s magic spread to the eastern nation’s capital and two mages came to train her son, willing him to become a weapon for the crown. No matter their hard training, their harsh words, they never broke the childlike wonder her son had, his spirit never broken.

“I had once held the belief that Kota could become that country’s equivalent of a court mage, but, after seeing what they put him through...I wanted nothing more to do with that land,” Yabu’s mother continued, her story captivating. “But the war was cooling once more, both sides seeking an agreement with the other. Slowly, I realized that those mages wanted to take everything away from my son that made him special, and that broke my heart.”

Kyoko looked at each of them, her eyes strong but a pain deep within them. “I didn’t want them to block his magic, but, if we didn’t, deep down I knew that peace wouldn’t last, and war would break out far quicker than it had in the past. I wanted my children to know a time of prosperity and never fear if they would be attacked or killed.

“Once the treaties were signed, I moved back home to our country. The mages wiped Kota’s memory of any elemental magic or spells he had casted in the first few years of his life,” she continued. “Myself and his siblings allowed him to think that he showed signs of magic on his seventh birthday. I thought that he would live out his years as a simple mage, but it appears as if someone has released the block on his power.”

Yuto went to raise his hand, as if to announce he was the one to do it, but put down his hand once Keito nudged him in the ribs.

“I hope that I answered any questions you might have,” Yabu’s mother said. “My Kota is a good boy, and I only wish the best for him, even if he’s been lacking in writing letters home the past few years. I trust that your words are true and you all have the best intentions for him in your hearts.”

Hikaru spoke immediately. “We do. Yab-Kota, and I have been friends for years.” He looked to Keito who nodded. “We only want to see him return back to his normal self.”

“I haven’t known him as long as Hikaru, but I know your son to be a kind and gentle person,” Keito said. “We don’t have any magic ourselves, but we will do everything in our power to help him.”

Yabu’s mother looked to Yuto, as if wishing him to speak, but he only sputtered out, “I….uh...help...good?”

She stood from the table and began heading towards the door. “I hope that the three of you may help my son.”

They were told it was a short walk, leaving their horses tied up at Yabu’s mother’s home. They walked through the small town, the people gathering and watching them as they passed only to turn back into their homes once they had gone. They were led more east, long past the last house in the village. They walked for what felt like twenty minutes, their only guiding lights the torches both Keito and Yabu’s mother carried, until they came upon a small shack on the edge of the rocky cliffs bordering the ocean. 

“He’ll be in there,” Yabu’s mother said, stopping many yards from the structure. “I wish you the best in calming the storm in his heart.”

They bid their farewells, watching as she slowly retreated to the small village, her torch getting smaller and smaller until it disappeared into the blackness of the night.

Their little group slowly approached the shack, boots stepping through overgrown grass that hadn’t been cut in years or was natural to their environment. It couldn’t be larger than just a single room, the wood well worn and barely holding together. The color had dulled to a medium grey, and there were small sections that anyone could peer into to see the contents within. 

“I can see why he would return to this area of the country,” Keito said, his voice low as they drew closer. “No matter where you go in the world, your home is still the most special place to you. It’s probably where he feels most as peace.”

“We’ll have to ask him when we see him,” Hikaru said, the door just within his grasp.

He paused as he clasped onto the door handle, the worn wood rough in his hand. He didn’t know why he hesitated. Fear? Although he knew Yabu was here, the spell Yuto cast earlier in the day telling him so, would he really be within this building? Would he be awake, his strange blend of magic waiting to attack them all? The unknown future holding him back from making a decision that had always been so second nature to him.

Now, whatever happened would happen. He knew there was only one answer and only one action that he would take. He hadn’t come this far to run away with his tail between his legs. The mission had always been to find Yabu, and he would find him. No matter what, no matter who crossed his path and tried to stop him, he would succeed.

Hikaru breathed in before pushing the door open.


	8. Chapter Seven

The interior of the cabin was much like the outside, grey. The contents were worn, from time or usage, Hikaru wasn’t sure, but there wasn’t much to explore. The single torch cast deep shadows into the room, but they were able to make out a few key areas. There was a small table with two chairs, an area for cooking, or at least that was what it appeared to be, and in the far back was a makeshift bed with a figure laid across it, a familiar mop of brown hair that Hikaru longed to call out for. 

It was him. It could only be him. 

He opened his mouth, going to call out to his best friend, but a hand covered it, obstructing his ability to speak and its owner tugging him out of the shack. So close. They were so very close, and Hikaru could only watch as Yabu receded from his vision once more, back into the grey depths of the shack. 

“Get off of me,” he hissed, ripping Yuto’s hand from his mouth. A thought crossed his mind, how Yuto was far stronger than his thin frame hinted at, but was quickly pushed away by his anger. “He’s right there. All we have to do is go in, and we’ve found Yabu.”

“Hikaru, you’re forgetting that Yabu tore down an entire tower before he fled here,” Keito said, his hand firmly on the door handle, guarding it. “We need to proceed with caution until we’re sure that’s the Yabu we know in there instead of...of…”

“Say it,” Hikaru said. “There’s no point in sugar coating it. Say what you mean.”

There was a fear in Keito’s eyes, one Hikaru hadn’t seen in a long time. Not since that fateful that Keito had woken up with no memory, no recollection of the past years. Hikaru knew whatever was going through Keito’s head would come out, for he always did what Hikaru asked of him. It was only a matter of when and not if. 

“That person we saw at the top of the tower wasn’t our friend, Hikaru,” Keito said, his voice shaky. “He was a monster, the type of villain you hear about in old stories that our grandparents pass down from generation to generation. I know Yuto has a plan to save him and return him to his old self if that’s the case, but you need to be prepared for the worst case scenario before we confront him.”

A silence hung around them, the torch light flickering in the ocean breeze, until Hikaru sighed. 

“You’re right.” The fear drained from Keito’s eyes. “I hate to admit it, but you’re right. Right now, if it comes down to a battle of magic, the only person that can do anything is Yuto.”

“Yes, that’s me!” Yuto piped up, voice loud until Keito hushed him. 

“What is your plan?” Keito asked. “I don’t think you’ve ever mentioned it beyond the idea of blocking it.”

“Because I’ve been finishing my research and preparations on our journey, and I have a foolproof plan.” There was an odd smile on Yuto’s face that didn’t set well in Hikaru’s stomach. “Hikaru, if you would be so kind. I’d love to demonstrate on you.”

He exchanged glances with Keito, the younger boy nodding, before Hikaru resigned to his fate. “If you must.”

“Perfect,” Yuto said, reaching out for Hikaru’s wrist and yanking him closer. “So, we all know that the source of all of a person’s magic is right here.” He tapped a finger between Hikaru’s eyes. “But, in order to properly block a person’s magic, you can’t apply to spell to a single spot. It must be done here.” His fingers moved, settling on Hikaru’s temples.

There was something about this gesture that made him uncomfortable, every ounce of Hikaru’s being telling him to push Yuto away and to run. But there wasn’t any reason for it? He was born with no magic, grew up with no magic, and yet everything about him was saying this wasn’t good. Far from it. His breath was stuck in his throat, not coming no matter how hard he tried. 

“This spell, to a magic user, merely cuts off one’s magic from the source. Yet,” a firm hand was on the back of Hikaru’s neck, holding him in place, “if someone were to enact the same spell to someone born without magic, the effects would be….fatal.”

Yuto released his hold on Hikaru, and every ounce of his fight or flight reflex washed away from his body, and he was able to breathe once more.

“How fatal?” Keito asked, voice quite small.

Yuto looked at him, his face quite grave until a smile spread across his lips. “I’m just joking. Nothing would happen to a non-magic user if I cast that spell on them. You’d feel a little tingle, maybe sleep for a thousand years, but nothing major-”

“Yuto-”

“Also a joke!” Yuto said, waving his hands as if they might calm Keito down a little. “Relax, relax. Trying to ease the tension here.” He let out a nervous laugh. “Point is, my plan is super simple. I’ll walk in there, put Yabu into a choke hold like this.” Like a firework going off, Yuto leapt back to Hikaru and put an arm around his neck. “Then fingers here.” His cool touch was back on Hikaru’s temples, the strange feeling from earlier not returning. “Spell cast. Bam! No more weird wind magic.” He let Hikaru go as quickly as he had come. “Any questions?”

“Why do you keep using me as your example?” Hikaru asked, rubbing his neck where Yuto had grabbed.

“Because it’s fun. Next question?” he asked.

“That’s...your great plan?” Keito asked, mouth agape. “What if Yabu breaks free?”

“He won’t, trust me,” Yuto said, as if it was the most reassuring thing in the world. “I’m physically stronger than him.”

“But what if he uses magic?”

Yuto waved off Keito’s concern. “We’ll tackle that issue when we get to it.”

There was an exasperated look on Keito’s face that Hikaru could sympathize. There was an air of importance around the name of court mage, one that people had clung to for centuries as the title had been passed down from mage to mage. They were the brightest, most powerful people in all of the land. One you expected greatness from. 

Yet Yuto’s plan was resting on Yabu being incapacitated for long enough that Yuto could enact a spell that neither Hikaru or Keito knew he was capable of casting. The magical strength to cast it? Sure. The ability to get it done? There wasn’t a sure answer as to whether Yuto could or not. For that, Hikaru could understand Keito’s worry, but, with Yabu merely feet away, this was their only option. 

“You spent the weeks it took us to get here….researching…how to save Yabu...and this is what you came up with?” Keito asked.

“I mean, Yuto is really strong?” Hikaru offered, trying to ease Keito’s mind. “It might not be our greatest plan, but we have to have faith that Yuto can get it done.”

There was a long moment where Keito looked between the two of them, brows furrowed before he caved. “I suppose we have nothing left, but to put our trust in this.” He looked to Yuto, smiling. “You’ve helped me more times than I could ever count. I have no reason not to trust in you now, so let’s save Yabu.”

Keito pushed open the door to the shack once more, the dark room the same as they had left it minutes before. Yabu was still laying on the bed, not moving a muscle as he slept. Yuto crept across the room, Keito and Hikaru hovering behind, not wanting to get too close in case they were to get in Yuto’s way. When he was close, Yuto turned, giving the pair a thumbs up before turning his attention back to the sleeping Yabu. 

Hikaru felt as if he was holding his breath, a tightness in his chest as he watched Yuto reach out and place his fingers upon Yabu’s temples to start the spell to block Yabu’s power. He wanted so desperately, so hopefully, for this to work. For, when Yuto was done, for Yabu to wake and greet them as if nothing had ever been wrong. 

It was foolish to wish for it to be so, for there were gaps in Yuto’s plan that weren’t accounting for worst case scenarios, but this was how their little group had been operating for even longer than Keito had been a part of it. They wished for the best, cheered when plans went how they were supposed to, and problem solved when things went awry. This time, Hikaru really wanted things to go how Yuto planned. 

A light breeze kicked up in the room, Hikaru and Keito exchanging worried glances, but Yabu didn’t stir. They heard Yuto murmuring as the breeze turned a little stronger.

“Just a little more,” they heard Yuto say, his voice oddly soft. “Stay down. Stay down. Let me do what I need to.”

Even from across the little shack, Hikaru saw when Yabu woke up. His eyes fluttering open, those warm brown eyes looking up at Yuto so confused and questioning as to what was happening. Only for panic to fill them, a fear filling his eyes as Yabu understood what was happening to him. His eyes closed, blinking, and, when they opened once more, they were glowing that same chartreuse color they had back at the palace.

Yuto reacted quickly, pulling Yabu into the same hold he had demonstrated earlier on Hikaru, but the wind around them started to drastically pick up, whipping around them and making the old boards of the shack groan under the pressure.

“Keito, hold on,” Hikaru said, reaching out and holding the young duke to him. Inoo’s previous words came to him, spoken so many times in the past few weeks.. “I think a storm is coming.”

A snap and the roof was ripped off, the night sky becoming visible to them as the wind howled around them. Hikaru reacted just fast enough, throwing himself and Keito to the ground as a large wooden portion of the wall came careening into where they had just been standing. 

It was as if they were at the center of a large tornado, the remnants of the house, the walls, the furniture, everything was hurled around in a wall of wind around them. Hikaru could make out pots and pans as well as other kitchen appliances and broken chairs flying through the night sky, sometimes breaking from the strong gusts around them to disappear into the darkness of the night. At the center of it all was Yuto and Yabu once more, enraptured in a battle of strength as Yabu tried to claw free of Yuto’s grasp.

Yabu let out a frustrated growl. His noise sounded so inhumane as his nails dug into Yuto’s skin, breaking the top layer and leaving bright red scratches that Hikaru could see in the moonlight. Still, Yuto kept clinging to Yabu, his fingers never leaving Yabu’s temples. Yabu reached up, fingers digging in deeply to Yuto’s skin and drawing blood. Only then did the court mage let out a scream of pain.

Hikaru watched as his friend, his most trusted person in all of the world, exploit that weakness. He watched as Yabu dug his finger into that cut, blood pouring more freely from the wound as it opened, and Yuto’s grip weakened on Yabu’s neck. It was only then that Yabu, eyes glowing that eerie green, was able to shove Yuto away, the spell Yuto was in the middle of casting breaking.

Hand glowing blue, Yuto covered the wound on his forearm, yelling at Hikaru and Keito, “Distract him for a few minutes. I’ve got an idea.”

“Distract him?” Hikaru yelled back. “We don’t exactly have magic to fight him with.”

“You’re smart. You’ll think of something,” Yuto said. He waved his injured arm, knocking all of the free flying objects from Yabu’s wind into the night sky. “Just trust me? Everything will be fine,” he said before running towards the cliff and leaping into the depths below.

“He’s insane,” he heard Keito mutter next to him. 

“You’re just now realizing this?”

“We’re discussing this later.” Keito pointed in the direction of the cliffs. “Yabu’s trying to follow him.”

Although at a much slower pace than what Yuto had run, Yabu was indeed following him, the wind moving with him as he traversed the grassy ground to where the earth met the sea. It was a split second decision, one his body made before his mind could comprehend the repercussions of his actions, but Hikaru picked himself off of the ground and ran after his friend. 

“Yabu, stop it!” he yelled, stopping before he got too close to his friend, as if getting too close meant he was free from being attacked. “This isn’t you. I know it’s not you.”

Yabu continued moving, creeping closer and closer to the edge. The sound of ocean waves crashing against the rocky surface was so loud but Hikaru only raised his voice to speak louder, calling his name. “Yabu!” Yet Yabu didn’t react.

Mind racing, he knew Yuto asked for time, but the amount of time hadn’t been specified. This couldn’t be enough. Surely there would be a sign as to when Yuto was ready? Until then, there had to be a way to get Yabu’s attention.

“Yabu!” He yelled, voice straining, but there wasn’t a reaction. “YABU!” Hikaru yelled once more, voice as loud as he could make it, but, still, Yabu only continued to get closer and closer to the edge. “YABU! YABU! YABU! FUCKING HELL, KOTA, JUST LISTEN TO ME!”

He stopped just at the cliff’s edge. Yabu stopped his relentless pace forward to the sea and turned, glowing green eyes focused on Hikaru and features as solid as stone. 

It was unnerving. It was as if every ounce of humanity had been wiped from Yabu, only leaving behind the shell of the person that had once existed. There was no warmth, no sadness, no emotion. The mere thought that this...thing was supposed to be the person Hikaru trusted most in the world, had trusted for so many years, was heartbreaking. Yet, there had to be some humanity left in that shell, some remnant of Yabu, that he could appeal to. That much was certain. 

“Hey, Kota, do you know the first time I realized I could trust you?” he asked, waiting for a response but Yabu didn’t move. He made no motion to speak. “I think we had been traveling for about a year after we met Yamada for the first time. You had agreed because you didn’t think it was safe to return to your job, and you had no place else to go that was close at the time.”

Hikaru watched Yabu as he continued to speak, but those features were unmoving as stone. “We didn’t have a lot of money some weeks, so I stole. You didn’t like that much and always said that if I was caught stealing food, you would turn me into the police.” The wind continued to whip around them, but its edges felt much more gentle than before. “I had faith in myself, so I never thought it could happen.”

He laughed. “To think an apple was what did me in. The shop keeper kicked up quite a fuss, and I remember looking at you and I knew. God, I knew you wouldn’t help me, and this would be the end.” Hikaru shivered, remembering that moment as if it happened yesterday and not years ago. “But then you spoke. You convinced that shopkeeper you had bought two apples, and one of them you had given to me. You even procured one out of your bag to prove it to him. Your words were the only thing that kept me from being arrested.”

Yabu still stood there, listening to Hikaru’s words, but nothing gave away the impression that he was listening. Still, Hikaru continued on. 

“That was the first moment I knew I could trust you. That you had my back, and I would protect yours,” Hikaru said. “I still trust you, Kota. I trust that this is something that you can beat, and we can go back to how things are supposed to be. You, me, and Keito together.”

There was a moment, just a moment, that Hikaru could swear where he saw the mask break. Just a second, one blink of Yabu’s eyes, and those glowing green eyes were gone, replaced by his normal brown. Yabu was still there.

“Yabu-”

Yuto’s voice came booming from the sky. “Hikaru, move!”

He had enough time to leap out of the way before he heard the sound of rushing water, much like a river passing quickly over rapids. A stream of water rose from the cliffside, much like a concentrated tidal wave the width of a human being, before turning and flying over the land to where Yabu stood. Yabu only had enough time to turn around, stare into the beast that was rushing towards him, before it struck, the wave crashing into him and knocking him further inland. Just as quickly as it had come, the water was gone as well as the wind, as if neither had ever existed.

“What the hell was that?” Hikaru shouted, watching as Yuto carefully floated up from the ocean and landing on solid ground. 

Keito was watching wide eyed, looking between Yuto and where Yabu had been knocked away. “Yuto, you have elemental magic?”

“I wish!” Yuto exclaimed. “That would be so cool, but no. I combined a few spells together. Teleported a bunch of rock from a nearby cliffside to displace the water and then a direction spell to funnel it into an attack.”

“...why are the plans you come up with in five minutes better than the ones you have weeks to think through?” Hikaru asked.

Yuto scoffed. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. All of my plans are genius.”

There wasn’t any time to react, a small gust of wind whipping forward and striking Yuto in the chest, knocking him backwards. Two more careful blasts, knocking Hikaru and Keito backwards as an impenetrable wall of wind rose, the opening unseen as it rose tall into the night air, entraping Yabu and Yuto within it.

“Keito!” Hikaru yelled, running around the wind, trying to find Keito in the darkened night. 

He kept his eyes trained, looking for any movement. Anything to let him know that Keito was alright and wasn’t injured. He didn’t allow himself to stop panicking until he saw Keito, sitting in the grassy field, massaging his neck. 

“What do we do?” Keito asked, looking at the scene before them.

“Not much we can do,” Hikaru said, looking on as well, “besides sit here and hope that Yuto can block his power...somehow.”

It was as if they were sitting on the edge of a war, watching as two sides raged against each other in a fight of good versus evil. Yuto flung spell after spell caressed in light blue magic at Yabu, but each was knocked away with Yabu’s wind. The stronger spells Yuto chose, large bursts of energy that brightened the night sky, were wiped away by chartreuse magic as if they were flies.

The more high level magic Yuto used, the more tired Hikaru watched the court mage become. It had been hard to believe so long ago how much power and energy Yuto had, but the more relentless his attacks became, the longer it took for Yuto to cast them. The more Yuto started to run around the field and try to deflect Yabu’s own spells.

They could only watch as Yabu slowly closed the distance between himself and Yuto, the wind almost getting stronger. Yuto did his best to push Yabu back with a few spells, but they were nothing to Yabu. When he was so close, only an arm’s distance away, Hikaru watched as his friend reached out and curled his fingers around Yuto’s neck, hand glowing green as Yuto struggled to break free of Yabu’s hold. 

“Yabu!” he called out, but the wind blocked out his words. There was nothing around them to even throw, to try and break the barrier to try and distract Yabu.

“He’s going to kill him,” Keito said, hands clutching the clothing around his chest. His words coming out so weak, so scared. “He’s going to kill him, and there’s nothing we can do to stop him.”

They could see Yuto’s skin start to change color, his body not getting the oxygen it needed to survive. His movements became slower, not as strong, yet he still continued to fight for life. Yet with all of the panic, all of the struggle before him, Yabu didn’t move. His body offered no sign of remorse for his actions as his grip tightened around Yuto’s neck. 

A blast of red magic shot from behind Hikaru and Keito, striking through the wind and hitting Yabu in the side. In the confusion, his grip lessened against Yuto’s neck and the wind died around them. Yuto broke free from Yabu’s hold, breathing deeply as he cast his own spell to knock Yabu from his feet.

“Move,” a voice barked behind Hikaru, and he felt the person grasp his shoulder tightly in his hand. “Get over here now!” 

Yuto didn’t waste any time, teleporting to where their little group was and taking hold of whoever had saved them. The last thing that Hikaru saw before they were whisked away in their own teleportation spell was Yabu rising from the ground.


	9. Chapter Eight

They landed in a small clearing in the woods, enough tree coverage that they wouldn’t be seen by any nearby roads and far enough into the woods that no one wandering off the path would find them. It was very much how he preferred it to be.

“What are you doing here?” the angry one, Hikaru asked. He could see from the way Hikaru was holding his stomach that the teleportation spell was having its effect on him, the poor duke looking close to puking next to him.

He chose to ignore the question, checking the magic of the amulet around his neck. Half-filled. That wasn’t good. He hadn’t expected that teleportation spell to cost him so much magic, but, perhaps that’s what happened when you choose to save four people instead of only yourself.

“Yamada!”

He looked up, the anger more apparent on Hikaru’s face now. “Why are you here? You haven’t left the mountains in years. Why now?”

“Is this really how you treat someone who just saved your lives?” he asked, deflecting the question. “If I hadn’t been there to save you, your precious court mage would be dead, and the two of you would be next on the magical strangulation list.”

The court mage. Yuto. Yamada didn’t dare look at him. He didn’t want to see the anger in his eyes, the hatred at seeing how his bitter rival was still alive and not dead as he believed. There was only so much he could handle in one moment, only so much anger, and it was easy to focus only on Hikaru. The older man made it easy to focus all of Yamada’s frustration and fear into him, goading him into fury.

“Yabu wouldn’t do that.”

“And yet he did, Hikaru,” Yamada said. “You saw it yourself. He had no compassion within his heart as he attempted to kill the court mage.” Yuto. “He wrapped his hand around his neck.” Yuto’s neck. “He squeezed until it was difficult for him to breathe.” Yuto. “That Yabu that we all saw would kill again if given the chance. He would kill us all.” Himself, Hikaru, the duke, and Yuto. Yuto. Yuto.

“He’s our friend,” Hikaru said.

Ever defiant. Ever stubborn. There was a reason why Yamada disliked whenever Hikaru weaseled his way into his life, for the other man always wanted to do things his way. He was too pure, always believing the best in those he claimed to be friends with. He never looked at the bigger picture, the one that told how absolutely cruel the world could be.

“He may have been, but that man back there is no longer a friend,” Yamada said, his voice as stern as he could make it. “We only have one choice if we want our country to go back to being as peaceful as it possibly can be. We have to kill Yabu.”

Screw the magic. He had come all this way to try and syphon that energy he had felt weeks ago to try and give himself more power. There was more than enough, Yamada had believed, for him to take enough to prolong his magical ability without leaving its host without their own magic but that had changed. Upon seeing it in action, upon seeing how absolutely out of control it was, there was no doubt in his mind that his plan was outside of his own capacity.

Even by himself, Yamada couldn’t hope to take Yabu down. The only reason they had managed to get away was because he had the element of surprise and Yabu had been occupied during that time. Without those two things, he surely would have been wrapped up in a battle they were all destined to lose.

“Will you help me?” A question, a simple one. One where he couldn’t say Yuto’s name, the characters getting caught in Yamada’s throat. The first time he allowed himself to look in Yuto’s direction, to see the expression on his face.

Confusion?

It...it wasn’t the emotion Yamada had pictured on Yuto’s face upon their meeting. Far from it. Anger, rage, fury, such negative emotions had always been at the forefront of Yamada’s mind when he pictured the other mage, but confusion? He couldn’t have predicted that.

“You’re not killing Yabu,” Hikaru shouted, voice firm. He turned to the duke, Keito was it? He turned to him, voice not losing its power. “Tell them they can’t kill him. There has to be some sort of law or anything to keep him from doing this.”

“I think we all need a good night’s sleep,” the young duke said, finally speaking. “It’s been a long day of travel for all of us. We can discuss this first thing in the morning and make a decision then when tensions aren’t as high. How does that sound?”

There was a murmur in their little group, a quiet agreement to wait until morning. They made a little fire, Hikaru agreeing to brew the four of them some tea before they all succumbed to sleep, and Yamada could feel Yuto’s eyes following him wherever he went. Even when he tried to get some rest.

It would be a long day tomorrow.

* * *

“Are you sure this is the right thing to do?” Yuto asked, the blue color in his hands dying down as the spell he was casting finished.

“I do,” Yamada said, tossing the rock he was holding and it careened off the barrier Yuto had constructed with his magic. “I really do.”

There was no way Hikaru would ever accept Yamada’s decision to kill Yabu. There was too much history between them, too many years of friendship. Even though Hikaru has witnessed the destructive power his friend now held, he would always believe there was another way. For that very reason, he had to stay put, and a barrier spell was the easiest way to make sure Hikaru and the duke couldn’t follow them. Nothing could get in, and nothing could get out. That’s just the way Yamada wanted it.

The early morning sun had just left the earth, slowly rising in the sky as they slowly traversed the earth to wherever Yabu was. Yuto cast a tracking spell, a small scrap of Yabu’s tunic tucked into Yuto’s clothing to check the spell whenever necessary. Inside Yamada's own bag were the only remaining bits of his magic left. Four and a half amulets. It’s all he had left before he was utterly useless and as plain as the next person.

There was a silence between the two as they walked, the sun rising higher and higher into the sky. Yamada hadn’t even been sure of why Yuto had agreed to go with him. He had merely woken the mage up, telling him of his plan, and Yuto had agreed without any hesitation. If Yamada didn’t think of it any other way, he would have believed the other had ulterior motives for his acceptance.

“I didn’t realize you had become so murder crazy since we last met.”

The words caught Yamada off guard, but not enough for him to be unable to fire off a quick response. “You’re one to talk.”

“Ah, yeah,” Yuto said, his voice getting quite small. “It did seem that way, didn’t it?”

The fear crept back up, the memories still so clear after so much time. The anger, the fury. The feeling of wanting to flee for your life, but there wasn’t an obvious escape route in sight, the only options being to fight or accept death as if it was a close friend.

They walked in silence once more, the only sounds around them ones of nature, birds and small animals flitting through the trees, and the sound of their boots crunching the floor below them.

There was something about Yuto, something about the way that he spoke that intrigued Yamada. Although he was confronted with an accusation of attempted murder, he didn’t deny nor accept it. He had deflected the answering using soft language. That it was merely Yamada’s memory or his point of view that didn’t line up with Yuto’s own, and, despite his desire to keep the conversation between them to a minimum, Yamada couldn’t help but speak up.

“I never understood it.”

He saw Yuto perk up out of the corner of his eyes. “Understood what?”

“How you could go so quickly from wanting to befriend me to wanting to kill me,” Yamada clarified.

Yuto fell behind, footstops stopping, and Yamada had to stop and turn to focus on the taller mage. “I wasn’t trying to kill you,” he said. “I know it may have seemed that way, but I was trying...I was trying to do everything I could to make you give up.”

Yamada stood for a moment, considering Yuto’s words, before turning back around and following the path they had been carving out to get to Yabu. Yuto’s footsteps soon caught up with him, his long strides slowing to match Yamada’s own.

“It’s true,” Yuto said, breath coming out in bursts as he talked. “I really don’t have any ill will towards you right now, and I’ve forgiven you years ago for what you said to me.”

“For what I said?” Yamada shouted, stopping in his tracks once more to look up into innocent brown eyes. “You told me at the top of the mountain that you would destroy me. You told me that you would destroy everything that I stood for. How does that equate to not wanting to kill me?” His fury was only growing with each word he spat out. “I faked my own death because I was afraid of you. I’ve spent years in those mountains hiding from you. All because you tried to take everything I loved away from me. You tried to take my life, and I’ve paid the ultimate price for trying to protect it.”

Those innocent eyes. Those innocent wide eyes. Yamada knew that they were fake, just a facade. Yuto knew how to act quite well, to try and get sympathy, but it wouldn’t work on Yamada. He had seen the anger, the depths of negativity that existed in the court mage, and there wasn’t anything anyone could do to convince Yamada otherwise.

“I will take accountability for my words and my actions, but you have to take accountability for yours as well, Yama-chan,” Yuto said, that old nickname so strange for Yamada to hear again.

“What do you mean take accountability?” Yamada asked, his words still coming out so venomously. “I have nothing to take accountability for.”

“You called me an idiot.”

He said that so matter of fact it almost made Yamada want to use the remaining amulets he kept in his bag to fight Yuto instead of the out of control mage they were seeking. Almost.

“But you were being one,” Yamada said, feeling his anger boiling even more. “You were trying to get our country attacked with what you were suggesting.”

“I’m not an idiot,” Yuto said once more. “Even I noticed that our magic styles complimented each other. Combined together, my power with your study and discipline, we would have been the perfect combination to protect the king and the kingdom. Even if we had been attacked for having two court mages, we would have been strong enough to protect everyone.”

Yamada was stunned into silence. It was, perhaps, the first intelligent thing he heard Yuto utter, and it had been something Yamada himself hadn’t considered.

“I may be the son of a court mage, but not everything was always sunshine and roses,” Yuto said, the only other noises between them were the nature around them. “My father was always telling me to sit down, study, and practice, but magic was always something I used to express myself.” They walked for a little before Yuto continued. “He often called me an idiot because I didn’t know the magical theory. I only knew the spells and not how they worked. He didn’t find pride in my power, only disdain for I wasn’t as well versed in study as him, and I was punished for it.”

“I...I didn’t know.”

“No one knew,” Yuto said, clutching his own bag tightly. “To the country, we were a powerful family of mages that had protected the kingdom for generations. How was anyone to know what went on behind closed doors?”

Yuto stopped in his tracks once more, hand reaching out to make Yamada stop with him. “I don’t expect anyone to understand what I’ve gone through. I don’t even expect you to understand it all but,” he said, looking Yamada in the eyes, “that word holds more power over me than anything you could ever imagine.”

It was a long time, it felt like forever in Yamada’s own head, as he stared into Yuto’s eyes, where he truly saw the pain behind them. Where he saw the person who had built himself up, and Yamada believed, if only for a little bit, that perhaps Yuto was the person that he understood the most in this world.

“I’m sorry.”

Yuto blinked, and that pain was gone from his eyes. It was as if he perked up a little bit, and those fireworks Yamada had remembered from so long ago seemed to explode around Yuto’s body.

“Let’s find Yabu,” Yuto said, and they continued walking together.

It was an hour’s worth of walking before they found themselves back by the cliffs, the clear sky reflecting in the ocean and making the waves sparkle under the light. If it was any other day, perhaps a small holiday to the sea, Yamada would have found himself in the cool water to have a little fun. If only it was as happy a trip as that.

The tracking spell grew brighter the closer they came to a familiar place that tugged at Yamada’s memories, some place familiar to him in the sunlight. There were wooden boards littering the ground, broken chairs and bits of a table scattered around, and, at the end edge of the cliff, Yabu sat on the only bit of dirt that wasn’t covered in grass.

He almost looked peaceful as he sat there, looking into the sea, as they approached Yabu from behind. Perhaps they had the element of surprise and could end this all quickly.

“This was my grandfather’s cabin. Before he passed. I used to spend the weekends here. It was my favorite place.”

Yamada stopped in his tracks, a few spells flying through his head in which he could use to attack in case Yabu did. As far as he had known, Yabu was unable to speak, a side effect of having the block removed from his magic. The fact that he was talking, in simple sentences no less, could only be a sign of something far worse to come.

“You’re….coherent?” Yuto asked.

“Not for long,” Yabu said, his body unmoving. “I can’t...I can’t control it for long. It’s too much, but I heard you both coming and...I just wanted to try and talk to you...for a bit.”

They could hear the struggle in his voice, and, the more Yamada watched Yabu, the more he saw Yabu’s body shake.

“Have you come to kill me?” Neither Yuto or Yamada answered, not wanting to put into words their goal, but Yabu only let out a chuckle. “Makes sense...It’s a lot of power...I’d kill me, too.”

“I’m sorry. I really am sorry, Yabu,” Yuto said. “I wish I could take everything back.”

Yamada nodded, though not understanding why he did so. “Yeah.”

Yabu’s limbs were shaking even more, spreading to his chest and the rest of his body. “It’s fine.” He started to move, to stand, and Yamada readied a spell to propel Yabu backwards if he struck. “It’s fine...Yuto...I forgive you.”

When Yabu stood, turning around to face the two of them, there was no humanity left in his expression. His eyes glowed the same green as when Yamada had come across him last night, face looking as if it had been carved from stone. The only remnant of their conversation was the single tear rolling down Yabu’s face.

Yamada struck first, flinging his spell through the air, hitting Yabu directly in the chest and knocking him back a few feet. Yabu looked down at where he had been hit, not a scratch on his clothing, before looking up, eyes focused on Yamada.

With a snap of his fingers, Yabu’s hands began glowing green, the color overwhelming to the eye. It almost appeared as if his hands were on fire, little tendrils of magic dancing to his wrists before the little flame broke, disappearing into the air.

A blink of his eye was all it took, Yabu disappearing and reappearing before Yamada, and Yabu threw a punch at him, hooking upwards to punch Yamada in the gut. The magical force behind the punch threw Yamada backwards, across the field, until he hit the ground, tumbling in the long grass.

Yuto jumped in quickly, distracting Yabu with his own flurry of attacks. Little explosions of energy that didn’t so much as phase Yabu as Yuto drew him far away from Yamada. It gave Yamada the time to pick himself off of the ground, the amulet around his neck thumping against his chest, and reach into his bag to grab two amulets inside of it. He smashed the decorative gems against each other, breaking them, and he felt the magical power rush inside of him.

The feeling was like a drug as he breathed the magic into his lungs, it raced around his bloodstream, and he felt more alive than he did before. He felt strong. He felt powerful.

He felt invincible.

It was as if color had been added to his world once more, even if Yamada himself knew it wasn’t possible. He saw all of the colors of the world, the beautiful blues of the ocean, the stunning greens of the trees, even the dark and muddy browns of a murky river, but the color now flowed through his veins. It was his to use.

“Could use a bit of help here,” Yuto shouted, another spell being flung from his fingertips and he narrowly dodged being attacked by one of Yabu’s own.

Hands glowing red, Yamada reached behind him, magic pulsing through his veins, as he felt a piece of himself extend backwards. He curled his fist, the magic closing in around a tree. “Move,” he yelled, throwing his arm forward. The magic followed, uprooting the tree it had grasped onto and launching it into the air towards where Yuto and Yabu exchanged blows.

Like the smart man that he was, Yuto followed orders, a small teleportation spell to put some distance between himself and Yabu before the tree struck.

Or it should have struck. It seemed to hit Yabu, but, instead of sending him careening through the air, it stopped as if it had hit stone instead. It hovered there for a moment, just long enough for Yamada to comprehend what was happening before the tree was launched back at him.

He felt someone grab his arm, murmur a few words, before he was teleported to another spot to watch the tree crash into the forest right behind where he had been moments before.

“Smart idea. Not the best execution,” Yuto said, tutting his finger at Yamada.

“Like you could have gotten it to knock him out,” Yamada threw back.

Wind started to swirl around them, nipping at their ankles until a gust hit Yuto in the chest and another seemed to wrap itself around Yamada’s arm. It tugged him towards the cliffside, increasing in speed as he neared the water.

No matter how he tugged, how he tried to break free, the force of the wind was too strong. Just as he reached the cliff’s edge, the wind around Yamada’s wrist broke, and he had enough time to cast a barrier spell to stop him from being flung into the ocean. With quick reflexes, he reached out to catch himself, hands curling around the top of the barrier as his body hit the invisible surface. Without missing a beat, Yamada pulled himself up enough to get a footing, check the distance to the cliffside, and jumped back to solid land.

He gave himself enough time to see where Yuto and Yabu were, the two engaged in a skirmish of magic and wind, before Yamada let out a range of attack spells directed at Yabu. One, two, three, five, twenty. He didn’t let up, not caring if one or two stray spells knicked Yuto in the side. If this person, this out of control magic, wished death upon them both, Yamada was more than willing to deal back enough powerful magic to crush it.

The spells continued, kicking up the dirt and grass around them until there wasn’t any visibility between himself and where Yabu had been moments before. Even when Yuto teleported to his side, Yamada didn’t let up. Spell after spell after spell until the magic from his two amulets had been used up and his spells ran dry. Only then did he stop.

“Do you...do you think that’s it?” Yuto asked, his eyes never moving from where Yamada had been attacking previously.

“I don’t know,” Yamada said. “But I don’t have a good feeling about this.”

Watching the cloud of dust start to settle, all they could do was wait for a sign.


	10. Chapter Nine

Like something striking in the middle of the night, a blast of magic was shot out from the settling dust. Another following it soon after then another and another, the caster mimicking the destructive power that Yamada had exhibited earlier, only tenfold. The earth where the spells hit was destroyed easily, only leaving holes behind.

Yuto had managed to construct a barrier quickly, protecting them from the never ending storm of magic beams that came hailing towards them at speeds that would have destroyed a village in moments. If hit, it would tear them limb from limb with how rapidly they struck the barriers. Yamada reached into his bag, hand tentatively wrapped around his third amulet, his free hand holding onto the one around his neck. It only was filled halfway with his magic, but...was it enough?

He crushed the one in his bag, feeling the same magical high as when the fight had just begun. The magic spread quickly within Yamada’s body, reinvigorating him once more.

Against his better judgement, Yamada added his magic to Yuto’s spell to strengthen the barrier even more against the attacks. It wouldn’t help if the barrier broke and the two were hit with something far more lethal than they anticipated.

“How should we proceed from here?” Yuto asked, breathing hard. “Me going all out and attacking him while you play around hasn’t exactly been working in our favor.”

“I threw a tree at him!”

“And then you tried to go for a swim,” Yuto said, his own frustration at their situation starting to show. “Believe me, Yama-chan, doing our own thing and fighting him isn’t working. He’s too strong.”

Magical attacks began raining down on them from above. Yuto took one of his hands off from the frontal barrier he had constructed to block the aerial magic.

“I gave him everything I had last night, and I only tired myself out before he tried to magically strangle me,” Yuto continued. “When he stops, we need a plan. A solid plan or the same thing that happened to me last night will happen again. The only difference is I don’t think another mage is going to pop out of nowhere to teleport us to safety.”

Yuto was right. As much as Yamada didn’t want to admit it, he was right. Playing to their strengths and fighting two different fronts would have been fine against any other mage, but Yabu had the capacity to fight them both equally without so much as breaking a sweat.

“It’s not the best idea, but we need to coordinate and attack him from two sides,” Yamada said, the spells against the barriers starting to lessen. “Hit him hard together then regroup if it doesn’t work.” He started to feed the barriers less and less as the spells were infrequent against them. “There has to be an end to his magic. He is only human.”

When the attacks were over, not a single one hit their shields anymore, Yamada and Yuto dropped their barriers and ran into the kicked up dust descending back to the earth. There was a chance that they could make this work, make it easier to win, and they had to take that chance.

Green magic shot through the air, striking the ground where Yamada had just been not two strides before. He kept running, keeping an eye on where Yuto was and when he stopped.

It was as if they were the same person, so intune with each other, as they stopped. Their spells were cast at the same time, with the same strength, and hit their target at the same time. In unison they moved, dipping and dodging any of Yabu’s attacks, readying their own, and firing. It was a complicated dance that they performed, one that the two of them only knew the steps to.

The wind was their downfall.

A gale surrounded them, the power of it far stronger than any storm Yamada had ever encountered. If it wasn’t for a bit of quick thinking, spelling his own boots to be heavier, he would have been picked up and whisked out to sea.

He couldn’t see, far from it, but, if his memory served him right, Yamada knew where he was. He remembered where Yuto had been, and the only thing Yamada needed was a sign from Yuto that their next coordinated attack was then.

“Yama-chan!” he heard Yuto’s voice shout over the heavy wind around them. “Go!”

Yamada released his spell and immediately could see that it wasn’t going to strike Yabu like he had wanted it to. It would miss by a few feet, but he saw what it was going to strike: Yuto’s own spell. Yamada reacted quickly once he saw what was going to happen, knowing that two colored spells colliding into each other would only spell disaster if he didn’t try and hide to escape the force of the blast. He released the spell on his boots and moved it to his tunic, so it would pull him to the ground and hopefully to safety from the oncoming blast.

The moment his spell collided with Yuto’s, red and blue magic meeting in the center of a storm, all Yamada could hear was a massive explosion. It was as if a cannonball had gone off around them, the sound ringing in Yamada’s ears long after it had ended.

But the wind had died, that much was for certain, and, when Yamada rose, picking himself off of the ground, he found Yuto doing the same as well as a battered Yabu struggling to stand. The effects of their collided spell had done far more physical damage than anything they had previously done. Perhaps now they had a fighting chance against Yabu.

Yuto was at Yamada’s side in a moment. “He’s weak.”

“We should end it now.” Yamada started to cross the distance to Yabu, but Yuto’s hand on his shoulder stopped him.

“Are you sure this is the right thing to do?” Yuto asked.

“Is this why you agreed to come with me? To have a conversation about your feelings and convince me to change my mind?” he snapped.

Yuto shook his head. “Not change your mind. I know this is dangerous magic we’re dealing with, but I can’t help but hope there’s another way we can save him. Yabu is still in there.” Yuto looked across the field, Yabu now standing on shaky legs. “That wind magic is just out of control. If only we could separate it and let one of the magics reside in his body. Maybe that would save his life?”

It had been Yamada’s original goal to suck the magic right from the source, but that had been when he had been at full capacity with his power. He wasn’t sure what was left inside of him from his third amulet, and he only had another amulet and a half left before Yuto would be left to fulfill their plan. There wasn’t much time left to decide and who knew if Yabu had the capacity to cast a large scale healing spell on his wounds before coming at them again.

Yabu.

Spell.

Magic.

He wasn’t sure why the memory came back now of all times. It had been about two years at this point. Back when he was goaded into helping that ungodly trio break Duke Okamoto’s curse. He remembered spending many nights locked in his study with Yabu, not allowing the other two to watch him in action. It hadn’t been because he wanted to keep it a secret. No, Yamada had never intended for his spell to be kept as such. The way that he worked on it, yes. He wanted to keep that little gem hidden.

Yabu had been the source of his testing, who Yamada pulled the magical energy from in order to make sure his spell worked and wouldn’t fizzle or destroy the duke upon taking root. Out of that trio, only Yabu had known. Only Yabu had been sworn to secrecy over Yamada’s limited power, and so he had kept it locked tightly behind his lips.

It all clicked in his head.

Yuto.

He could do the same to Yuto. Use him as a magic source for his spell. For his plan. It could work. It had worked before, and, with Yabu weakened from their combined blast, it would be easier to make the spell work.

Yamada grasped the amulet around his neck, gem gleaming red in the sunlight. Half filled. It was a lot of power, something he might have to lose in order to make sure they survived.

But it was worth it.

“Yuto,” he said, beckoning the other mage closer. Yabu was taking shaky steps forward, eyes glowing green. “Let me use your magic for a spell.”

Yuto seemed to hesitate a moment, eyes flitting between Yamada and Yabu, before he spoke. “Okay, but what are you going to do?”

Yamada grasped onto Yuto’s wrist, thumb pressing into where one of Yuto’s veins lied, and he felt the magical power coursing through his body. He placed his other hand on the amulet around his neck, eyes focused on Yabu.

“I’m following my plan,” Yamada said.

He pulled the spell from his memory, something he had only read a few times but had learned if there was ever a need for it. He felt the power grow within him, feeling Yuto’s power surge through the physical connection Yamada had made with him. Yamada felt that power, that energy, grow until he finally released the spell. It flew through the air until it met its target, hitting Yabu in the chest.

* * *

There was a hand on his shoulder. Something that should have been comforting to Hikaru, but it wasn’t. Far from it.

“It will be better if we talk about it,” Keito said, voice soothing to Hikaru’s ears. “You haven’t said much since we woke up.”

He hadn’t. He didn’t want to. The first moment he woke up, Keito shaking him out of a dream, he knew. God, he knew what had happened. Yamada and Yuto’s things were gone, their bedrolls still in place as if they planned on returning. Hikaru had tried to follow after them to try and stop them, but, no matter which direction he had ran in, a circular barrier had been placed around their camp. It was impossible to escape.

Anger. At Yamada, for even suggesting that Yabu be killed. Anger at Yuto for agreeing to such a ridiculous plan. Anger at Keito for suggesting they discuss everything in the morning, allowing Yuto and Yamada the time to slip away. And, most importantly, anger at himself for being unable to save his friend’s life.

Hikaru had managed to cook, pull together some food for himself and Keito with the rations they had on them. It hadn’t been much, but it was enough to sustain them as they waited for the inevitable.

Most of the day Hikaru had been imagining if he could feel the moment that Yabu was taken from the world. He imagined it as if there was a red string connecting the two of them, one where they had been bound since the moment Inoo pushed them together with his vision. Would he feel the snap of the string when it broke? How death would sever their connection upon Yabu’s last breath? It would be painful if it happened. That much Hikaru was certain of.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” he said, voice coming out so soft. “We both know what they’re going to do.”

“Yes, we do, but I hate seeing you like this,” Keito said, voice so soft, but Hikaru only found pain in his words. “If we talk about it, maybe it would make things easier when they return?”

“I don’t want to talk about it!” Hikaru lashed out. “I don’t want to talk about how my best friend in the world is dying. I don’t want to talk about my feelings. I just want to sit here in my pity and pretend like the world hasn’t taken away the person I care about the most in the world.”

The hand was removed from his shoulder, and Hikaru followed it to its owner. He only found pain in Keito’s eyes.

“Keito-”

“It’s fine,” Keito said, the shaking in his voice so strong. “It’s fine, really. I shouldn’t have pushed you when I know he’s a sensitive subject right now. I’m sorry for bringing it up.”

Keito turned and crossed the camp, and Hikaru’s heart broke when he watched as Keito wiped his eyes.

They didn’t speak for hours, sitting on opposite sides of the camp as Hikaru tried to find the words for his apology. It wasn’t Keito’s fault things were this way. Everything that happened had just been a series of unfortunate events that had plagued them since arriving in the south. It hadn’t been right to take his anger out on Keito, to say that Keito wasn’t the person he cared most about in the world. He was. Keito was his heart and soul.

“Keito?”

Keito looked up from the book in his lap, something he had been carrying on his person before everything that had happened yesterday, but a rustling in the trees surrounding them drew both off their attention.

Yamada was the first to reveal himself, looking worn and battered. Yuto followed not long after, and it was the first time Hikaru could remember the mage not having any little fireworks go off around him. Whatever had happened in the hours they had been gone had taken a lot, and Hikaru knew they would reveal the news sooner rather than later.

Yamada took a seat by the fire, reaching his hands out to warm them. “It’s done,” was all he said.

A thousand emotions went through Hikaru’s head in a moment, never stopping on one for too long and allowing him to truly feel it. He had spent so much time envisioning how he would feel upon knowing for certain that it had happened, that Yabu was dead, but his visions didn’t match.

It felt as if all of the color was being sucked out of his world. The greens of the trees lost their vibrancy, the air not smelling as sweet from the natural scent of the woods. It felt as if everything was far more dull than it had been not moments before, and there was nothing Hikaru could do to fix it. He didn’t have magic that allowed him to travel through time. He didn’t have the ability to raise someone from the dead. Yabu was gone. Forever.

More rustling came from the trees making Hikaru jump for his knife but he let go of his grip when he heard the person speak.

“Would someone please brew some tea? My chest is aching, and these two have made me walk for quite some time to get here.”

Hikaru’s body reacted before his brain could process everything around him. He leapt over the fire, the flames nipping at his clothing. There was no way. No way. It couldn’t be, but it was? He pulled the taller man into a hug, not wanting to let him go.

“You’re not dead,” Hikaru said, pulling Yabu closer to him. “I can’t believe it. You’re not dead.”

“Of course I’m not dead.” Yabu thwacked him on the top of his head, but Hikaru didn’t care. He was there. “I don’t quite remember the last few weeks if I’m honest, but I could eat a house with how my stomach is rumbling. Do you have anything to feed this old man?”

Another person joined them, hugging the two of them tightly.

“Welcome back, Yabu,” Keito said.

Hikaru changed his grip, opening his embrace to add Keito. After so long they were finally together. His heart and his home.

* * *

“You took quite a bit of my power for that last spell you cast.”

Yamada looked to the source of the voice, seeing Yuto’s little smile as their group walked together.

After giving Yabu their remaining food to fill his stomach, the group had made the decision to return to Yabu’s childhood home to retrieve the majority of their belongings as well as their horses. Although Yamada had left nothing in town, he had been coerced into following them for Yabu wished to be told the full story of how he had been saved from the magic that had consumed him.

“I did, but it was necessary for what I wanted,” Yamada said.

“I’m a little curious as to what type of spell you cast on him though,” Yuto said. “I checked him after your final spell hit. You didn’t block his magic, but I didn’t sense an overabundance of magic flowing through him.” Yuto sighed. “And here I thought I would finally have a new best mage friend to practice strong magic with.”

“If you can keep a secret, I’ll tell you what I did,” Yamada said, but Yuto was quickly nodding, promising his secrecy.

He procured an amulet out of his bag. The stone, once glowing red with his own magical energy, had changed in color. It was shining a bright green in the sunlight before Yamada pocketed it in his bag once more.

“You drained his magic?” Yuto whispered.

Yamada looked to the trio ahead of them. How Yabu walked along the path, looking at everything around him and taking in the sights. Hikaru and Keito talked quietly with one another, although it was Hikaru talking more than the duke. The more he spoke, the more Yamada saw Keito’s expression soften until he took Hikaru’s hand in his, kissing the back of it. It was...sweet.

“I did. Not all of it but enough that it wouldn’t go out of control again,” Yamada answered. “Neither you or I would have been able to keep him still long enough to repress that magic, and, even if we did, who’s to say that it wouldn’t break the hold in a year or two or even more? Besides killing him, this was the only option I could see that would end in Yabu keeping his life.”

Yamada didn’t like the smile that spread across Yuto’s face as he talked. “Stop that. What are you doing?”

“You do like people, don’t you?” Yuto asked, voice teasing. “You pretend that you don’t, but you really care. You would have used my magic to kill Yabu if you didn’t care, but you decided to save his life instead.”

“Oh, shut up,” Yamada said, nudging Yuto away with his elbow, but it only made the court mage smile more.

“What are you going to do with that magic? You don’t exactly need it since you have your own.”

If only that was true. Yamada wished it was true, but, besides the magic he had taken from Yabu, there was only one other amulet with his own power within it. If only Yuto knew how truly desperate he was to continue living on as a mage.

“I’ll destroy it,” Yamada said, the words coming easier than he thought. “I’ll take it back to the mountains, destroy it, and let the magic go back into the earth. Then I’ll rest.”

“Or,” Yuto said, holding out the word. “You could come with me back to the capital? We could become an awesome court mage duo and defend the country together, just like how we saved Yabu. Doesn’t that sound more fun?”

“I’ll think about it,” Yamada said, though he knew he had no intention of ever following Yuto to the capital. It was better to let him down slowly. “I have someone waiting for me in the mountains, and I’m afraid he’ll kill me if I don’t return at some point.” Better to make sure Chinen was happy rather than face his wrath.

Yuto nodded along, understanding of Yamada’s situation.

They walked along, heard the chatter of the birds flying around them as well as the gentle conversation floating through the forest. It was a moment of peace between them all before they went their separate ways: Yamada to the mountain, Yuto to the castle, teleporting to return to work quickly for the coronation, and the trio returning on horses at a slower pace.

But, for a moment, they were all at peace together.


	11. Epilogue

Epilogue  
Three days later

“Stop messing with it,” Hikaru said, irritation finally showing. “You heard what Yamada said when he left. It’ll come back.”

“Says you.” The pout was evident in Yabu’s voice. “You grew up without magic. Just imagine for all of your life you knew how to cook and then, suddenly, you wake up and you couldn’t cook anymore.”

“I’d listen to the powerful expert and not stress about it,” Hikaru said. “Yamada said you used a lot of magic in your fight against him and Yuto. He said it’s going to take a while for your body to reproduce the magic that you used so relax.”

“It still sucks,” Yabu said, sighing. “I just want my magic back.”

Yamada had left the next morning, saying how he needed to return to his own home, and Yuto had left the next day, wanting to get to the castle as quickly as he could. Hikaru, Keito, and Yabu had spent a few days in Yabu’s childhood home with his mother and the townspeople he had grown up around, meeting everyone from cousins to childhood friends Yabu had known.

“You’re telling me you befriended a duke _and_ the court mage and go on insane adventures around the country?” one man, who had introduced himself and Hikaru had promptly forgotten his name, Shoon perhaps, had asked, eyeing Yabu up and down. “I find this hard to believe. Would have thought you’d been jailed for all of the antics you used to get into when you were young.”

Not wanting to miss a good story, Hikaru and Keito had convinced the man to tell them about how Yabu was when he was young. His stories only revealed how much of a brat the mage had been in his youth before leaving for his magic apprenticeship.

“All of you are embarrassing,” Yabu had said, trying to quiet down all of his friends from the continuous stream of stories they told. “You haven’t heard me speak of all of the things you used to do. I still remember who your mothers are.”

Kyoko had been happy to have her son back in her home, even though he came with two other guests. She made sure the trio were well taken care of, their horses kept as well, until they inevitably had to leave.

“Take care of yourself, boy,” she had said, hugging her son tight. “I am so proud of you.” She pinched Yabu’s cheek, and he yelped and tried to break free of it. “Don’t do anything stupid to get yourself killed, and would it hurt you to write home more often? I miss your letters.”

It was only when Yabu promised to write more did she release her grip on his cheek.

“Keito?” Hikaru asked, and the other man hummed in response. “You’re awfully quiet. Have anything to share?”

“Just one thing I suppose,” Keito said, hands loose on the reins of his horse. “With everything that’s happened recently, I can’t help but feel as though there’s something important we’ve forgotten...”

* * *

The tavern was empty, most tables cleaned off and chairs placed on top to signal to anyone possibly awake at this ungodly hour that they shouldn’t enter the tavern. Not that there would be many. Most people this close to the mountains went home after last orders were finished, preferring to sleep in their own beds before needing to wake up for their daily work.

The lights were dim in the entire establishment except those closest to the bar where the owner sat behind the counter, polishing glasses he had finished cleaning, and the last customer of the evening.

“And then, get this, they just left me there! At the top of a tower! They didn’t even consider how I would feel being locked up for weeks. Just ran off to save their friend.” Inoo slumped in his seat, elbow upon the bar and head in his hands. His other hand loosely gripping his drink. He huffed, letting out his pent up aggression. “Isn’t that rude?”

“Quite rude,” the barkeep said, setting down another glass.

“I can’t believe how I was treated,” his tirade continued. “I warned all of them what would happen, but no one listens to a crazy old seer. The court mage had to break the block. He had to release all of that magic into the world, and he almost killed us all. And then what? Let’s completely forget about the seer that tried to stop all of this from happening and lock him in a tower. That’s a genius plan if I ever heard one.”

Inoo waved his hand over his glass. Though he quite enjoyed his visions, there were times that he needed to look into the present and scry to see the current state of the world. Each time he waved his hand over his drink the visions in the liquid’s surface changed. The infamous trio sitting around a campfire, enjoying a meal together. Yuto in his tower, clothes scattered around the floor, another figure in his bed as his little fireworks sparkled around him. Yamada in his home in the mountains, that green amulet dangling in his grasp as he hid it deep within a chest.

“Do you think he’ll try to destroy it?” the barkeep asked, his work slowing as Inoo caught him looking into the visions portrayed in the glass. “You had mentioned he had the intention to destroy it from when you scryed for information a few days ago.”

Inoo scoffed. “Doesn’t matter if he does or he doesn’t at this point. The storm is coming regardless of his choice now.” He waved his hand and the visions were gone from his glass. “It was going to come from the moment they destroyed the block on that mage’s magic. It won’t stop now.”

He leaned back in his chair, looking at the barkeep truly now. He was short, far shorter than any tavern owner that Inoo had encountered in his journey to get here. Most had been tall, brawly men who looked like they could rip a man apart just by looking at him. This one...he looked sweet, almost too kind. Almost as if he was out of place in a town so close to a lawless part of their country.

“To be honest, I’ve always been the curious type,” Inoo said, never breaking his gaze from the barkeep. “It’s why I’ve always checked up on different people and players in this little game we call life. Can’t help it. I blame it on the visions that have come to me my entire life, but there is one thing I’m too curious about right now.”

The barkeep kept up with his work as if Inoo wasn’t staring holes in him.

“I know from watching their little fight with Yabu that Yamada doesn’t keep his magic stored in his body anymore,” Inoo said, continuing to watch as the barkeep’s hands got a little more shaky but continued to work diligently on polishing his glasses. “My guess is that he hasn’t for quite some time.”

“Seems like a good theory,” the barkeep said, voice so calm as he worked.

“Those amulets he has are powerful enough to store large quantities of power,” he said, slowly sitting up so he was sitting far more proper. His attention drifted elsewhere. “Keeping that much magic safe inside of those stones would be quite important. Would require a powerful enchanter to do so.”

It was the first time that Inoo truly paid attention to the walls. At first look, it looked like the walls had been cracked over time, and yet they hadn’t crumbled. They were reinforced by something that he couldn’t tell what it was in the dim light, and, even then, he wasn’t sure he could see it in daylight either. Certain spots seemed to be darker than others, as if they were masking something. They were small, that was for certain, and almost looked like rocks had been shoved into the surfaces for safekeeping in plain sight.

“Not many of them in the world,” the barkeep said, rubbing out a difficult smudge mark on the glass he held. “Finding one to work on magical items would be as difficult as finding a seer such as yourself.”

“Perhaps that’s why Yamada would befriend such an enchanter.” Inoo could feel a smirk tugging at his lips. “And why said enchanter would choose to operate a tavern in the middle of nowhere. That way, if Yamada was ever in need of a magical object to help aid him, his enchanter friend would be close by. Though I wonder,” he said, voice turning oddly sweet, “why that enchanter would put up with someone as volatile as Yamada.”

Orange magic crackled through the decorative gems in the wall. Even covered in dirt to hide their brilliance, their bright light still illuminated the tavern.

“Sometimes I wonder as well,” Daiki said, setting down the glass he had been holding and throwing his rag over his shoulder. “Yama-chan has quite the strong personality, doesn’t he?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And with that, Into the Ocean is complete. A huge thank you to the amazing [Anna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thanku4urlove/pseuds/thanku4urlove) for putting up with me and all of my questions along beta reading this entire thing. You helped make this entire thing perfect.
> 
> I'm currently in the process of planning out the third and final part of the Song of River Lea trilogy. One day we'll see the conclusion to Hikaru's story ^^ Until then, happy reading everyone!


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